Intersecting Parallels
by Vile Slanders
Summary: An egotistical Xenopetrologist. A groundbreaking cosmological find. A hideous truth older than mankind itself. An abducted eleven year old girl. A cruel experiment. A reflection of a bygone species's Gya old mistake. Two lives are shattered in the pursuit of the ultimate life form. But is innocence the ultimate price of hubris? Or do the repercussions extend beyond the virtuous?
1. Chapter I: The Faces of Yesterday

_._

 _Yet another little project of mine, sharing and expanding on the TSoK formula. This tale encompasses the perspectives of two individuals who are about to discover something rather nasty in regards to artificial doomsday Pokemon. Just so you are all aware:_

 _I write without a shred of regret or remorse._

 _ **...**_

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 **The Saga of Kings:**

 **-.-.-.-**

" _ **Intersecting Parallels"**_

 **-v-**

 **.**

 _ **Written by:**_

Vile M.F. Slanders

 **.**

 _ **-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**_

 **Chapter I: The Faces of Yesterday**

 _ **-The following is a personal record, obtained from site P7-M9. Local authorities have successfully confirmed this document as the property of Doctor Roush; and the Chief Inspector of Fallarbor Town has requested a legal copy for the official statement regarding the events of site P7-M9.**_

 _ **-.-**_

 _-June 16th, 1523 post-Brink. First entry._

My name is Doctor Xavier Tiberius Roush

-As you can well imagine, I do not require any other contrived reasoning to justify the utter loathing that I experience when referencing my progenitors, beyond their addled christening of my magnanimous person with such a ridiculous name. I could have been named Ed, or Jeff, or Jake, or any other normal name that is typically bestowed upon a normal human being. But my mother was a drug addict and my father was a manwhore, so…

...Moving on?

Ignoring my ludicrous phonetic identity, and instead focusing on my glaringly oblique by comparison agentive title, you may find yourself pondering what manner of 'Doctor' is denoted by this academic accolade. The superfluous answer to your nonexistent inquisition I shall now summarily answer: I am a practicing Xenopetrologist.

-And you had already conceived of my name correlating a harmonious relationship to the phrase: socially statutorily ostentatious?

For the hopelessly confuddled and bemused layman, allow me to step down from the esteemed and empowering realm of existence that is reserved solely for those representing the cognitive echelon, all in the futile endeavor of enlightening you.

I am a _Zen-_ NO-Pet-TRO-law-jiss- _T_.

Or one who studies the lithic strata originating from extra-terrestrial provinces-

 _Oh, do excuse me…_

-I shall rephrase.

 _...I study rocks that have fallen to earth from outer space._

-You may cease your autonomic salivation now. I find your protopathic behavior a rather demeaning display against the entire Hominidae Family.

So to simplify the pre-established criteria pertaining to my cognitively formidable person, I am Dr. Roush, Sinnoh's foremost expert in meteorite acquisition and research. I received my Doctorate in Xenopetrology from the world-renowned "Veilstone University of Mineralogy and Metallurgy," or just the "Veilstone School of Mines" as they are want to cheapen the title down to now. Either way, I'm a Sinnoh native, _and no, I don't worship Palkia or Dialga._

-Don't ask me about "Gods," unless you want an educated heathen's objective exposition on the ethical, if not intellectual, aberrations pursued by idolaters and simpletons.

If you have any familiarity with the social aspects of Sinnoh, you might understand the reason behind my expressed venom regarding that nation's abominable deities and the nematodes that praise them.

Needless to say, my dogmatic agenda hasn't exactly endeared me to my fellow Sinnohvians; but as we of the intellectual elite are want to say of our willfully ignorant and zealously counter-intuitive counterparts…

- _Fuck those idiots._

Profanity is a verbal tool, whose shocking edge is always most savored by those whom seldom wield it.

And if I must confess? I simply cannot savor profanity's edge after having only recently recovered from the inanities that were unjustly suffered upon my person by my own countrymen. Which is why I am no longer a documented resident of Sinnoh.

-And why you'll find my official postage address here at Hoenn's aptly named, "Meteor Falls."

The location's very name is a pun. Leave it to the aboriginal survivors of the Terra-Divide to take notice of all the torrential waterfalls and all of the gaping craters left upon this portion of their scarred homeland, before designating such a locale as-

...Very well. It seems that you are capable of conceiving a pun's colloquial usage, and its relevance to the current train of dialogue. Color me astounded…

Back to the core of the matter...

I originally deemed it appropriate for my relocation to Hoenn's Meteor Falls after contacting a colleague of mine plying the same trade in the aforementioned area from his observatory in Fallarbor Town.

One such Professor Indiana Judas Cozmo.

-And here you thought my name was synonymous with pretentious.

Professor Cozmo is a novelty in our field. The man fancies himself a field researcher, but I've discovered that his disregard of manual labor has engendered a preference for eccentric social exchanges with Hoenn's local tribes, manifesting his field expertise as nothing more than yet another professional expression of anthropology's unadulterated lackadaisical adherences. Spoken quite plainly: Professor Cozmo is not a field researcher. The buffoon actually hires the residential tribes to locate and exhume his meteorites. Predictably, and more often than not, Professor Cozmo's "Outside Consultants" damage the rare specimens, or completely miss the less than obvious analogues altogether.

-Some of the gems that I've recovered after their having been carelessly tossed over a ignorant Draconid adolescent's shoulder…

...Well, let's just say that Professor Cozmo's methods might not have yielded the fullest merit of established data before I came along. In truth, I've only suffered Professor Cozmo's incompetence this long because he maintains a prospector's claim to several key locations where incredibly rare and valuable meteorite fragments can be lifted by the hands alone from the earth's outermost sedimentary layer.

So our partnership is one of business. Professor Cozmo provides me with the "Legally Obtained" resources, and I provide Professor Cozmo with the "Statutorily Correct" proof of origin regarding said resources.

-Honestly, the knuckle-dragging peckerhead once tried to pass off a Xenolith's province as Mars, when the lateral hematite composition and residual silicon and sulphur deposits clearly denoted a Vesta origin-

... _Ahem_.

...So it is suffice for me to say, that when left to his own devices, Professor Cozmo is nothing more than a detriment to the school of Xenopetrology.

-I'm just here for the Xenoliths. Nothing else.

Which brings me to my latest discovery.

-Well, not a confirmed discovery; nor was it my discovery to make; but the information and its source has left me with no other academic alternative than to risk an investigation.

One of Fallarbor's local Prospectors regaled me with the most curious tale regarding a meteorite's crash site. A recent crash, from the description a certain Clay Grantham gave me. Though the aforementioned prospector, Clay Grantham, was predictably crude in speech and overly euphoric in his report, I must grant the Frontiersman his due accolades. Clay Grantham is clearly an educated individual in the field of geology, unlike many of his fellow Frontier prospectors. I will admit, the prospector's apparent intelligence may have swayed me past my initial skepticism.

Clay Grantham reportedly stumbled upon a fresh crater only two weeks ago in the Great Barrens, roughly forty-three kilometers due west of P4-M1, or for those not familiar with the numerical index of craters, _The Grandfather,_ which is the largest known meteorite crater in the the southern hemisphere.

Though the impact zone was a scant estimation of one-hundred-and-ten meters in circumference, and a maximum depth of about twenty-five meters, the average size of the crater does not dissuade me from the obvious value of such a fresh find, nor does it deter me from a curious little twist in Clay Grantham's tale.

Now as any man of science knows, men of the Frontier are prone to wild exaggerations. Clay Grantham, I suspect, is no exception. But in this case, I also harbor a suspicion that no exaggeration was required for such a yarn.

Like every man who dares the Frontier, Clay Grantham arms himself with a capable monster deterrent. The deterrent in question was a rather impressive specimen from the Xenosilane-Ceratopsidae Family. An Aggron by the name of "Hammer," if my memory serves correct.

At any rate, it was this Aggron's behavior around the crater that struck me as odd, as it did the Aggron's Trainer; Clay Grantham. Like any inquisitive prospector, Clay Grantham was rather keen on exhuming the meteorite's valuable fragments from the crater, though a quick inspection from the crater's rim provided evidence of a fairly uncommon phenomenon.

The meteorite, as far as Clay Grantham could discern, was still intact. Indeed, the entire Xenolith seemed to have preserved its post-atmosphere structure rather well. Clay Grantham himself displayed shock at this discovery; as he, like I, realized that a Xenolith maintaining its composition post-impact is an exceedingly rare occurrence.

Perceiving the immeasurable value of such a scarce find, Clay Grantham immediately began drafting plans for the Xenolith's extraction. All the while, he was barely aware of his Aggron's elevating levels of anxiety. When Clay Grantham finally addressed his beleaguered Pokemon, Hammer seemed to express an uncharacteristic wariness of the crater and the Xenolith at its bottom.

Paying little heed to his Aggron's adverse disposition, Clay Grantham then proceeded to enter the crater, intent on measuring the scale of the Xenolith. And this is where the most peculiar behavior overcame Clay Grantham's normally stalwart companion.

Hammer, for reasons unknown, grabbed Clay Grantham shortly after the prospector had taken his first steps into the crater…

...And then Hammer proceeded to, and I quote; "flee from the meteorite as though the entire crater was haunted" while carrying his human compatriot.

Hammer did not stop his "desperate" retreat until they had crossed fifteen kilometers east. When the Aggron finally collapsed from exhaustion, reportedly almost crushing his human counterpart in the throes of fatigue, an emancipated Clay Grantham was quick to "question" his Aggron's outburst.

-Questioning a Pokemon. How absurd.

Either way, when that fruitless endeavor proved vain, Clay Grantham made immediate plans to return to the site; only to discover that his Aggron… was vehemently opposed to such a course of action.

Needless to say, the reason for why Clay Grantham has yet to return to the crash site was made known by the prospector's own words, "Cause Hammer won't even let me dream about that smoldering rock again."

-This statement was fortified by Clay Grantham's rather large and intimidating Aggron. Who, as one can imagine, communicated his verdict in the only manner that such a brutish Pokemon can. Indeed, it was rather shocking to witness what I had initially presumed to be a capable Trainer being punished by their own Pokemon.

Clay Grantham however, was able to provide me with the coordinates of the priorly mentioned Xenolith upon his return to consciousness. Surprisingly, Clay Grantham failed to request a finder's fee in the deliberations, though the recently accrued frontal lobe trauma might have had something to do with the prospector's absent swindling.

All in all, it was a rather intriguing tale, made even more fascinating by Clay Grantham's geological knowledge and his Pokemon's theatrical rendition of Shakespeare's Brutus.

Far too interesting of a tale for me to simply cast aside as another prospector's flight of fancy.

And truth be told: I've grown quite desperate to be free of my colleague, Professor Cozmo. One can only tolerate so much idiocy after having been recently exiled from their homeland. And Forty-three kilometers west into the Frontier is far outside of the Professor's established mineral claims.

So fair game is fair game. And this could be the lucky break that I've been eagerly seeking to establish my name in the Hoenn region's scientific community. To operate independently of Professor Cozmo, or those sharpened toothed savages that he quotes as his assistants…

-Yes, I'm willing to take the chance. I'm even willing to twist the knife in Professor Cozmo's spine when I utilize his own contacts in the Devon Company to see me safely to the site in question.

I'm even willing to alert him beforehand as to to my following up on a possible lead for our shared scholarly pursuits.

-I just won't tell Professor Cozmo about the pending mineral claim that I've secured in Fallarbor's Department of Environmental Sciences for a site forty-three kilometers west of _The Grandfather_. The very same mineral claim that has been titled in my name, and my name alone…

Cheers to my brightening future, Indiana. Thank you for your assistance in this matter.

-You pleb.

 _ **-.-**_

 _ **-Personnal Log of Doctor Fuji, recorded discussion with the ACE Director**_

 _ **Date: December 23rd, 1521 post-Brink**_

 _ **Location: Sevii Islands, Five Isle Meadow; Chrono Island**_

 _ **Subject: The Mew-2 Project**_

"Director, I realize that this call may have reached you at an inopportune moment-"

"Hardly, Doctor. I was just about to call you myself over a little question that I had in regards to your recent decommission of the Mew-2 Project."

"I realize that both your and my time are invaluable assets, so I will explain myself quickly."

"Please do."

"The samples that you sent me were cancerous. I was barely able to salvage the barren-most RNA from the remains. I don't know what Enzo was planning to do with the samples, but it was clearly unfounded and reckless-"

"The samples were cancerous. I believe that your lab was alerted to such before I delivered them to you. I expect results, Doctor. Not excuses and insubordination."

"Director, there was virtually nothing left worth saving! If we attempted to clone Enzo's results, we would be left with something even worse than what Chimera delivered to your predecessor! The Mew-1 prototype literally expelled tumors every time it exhaled!"

"Yet that prototype was everything that Enzo promised. Everything and more."

"...He was a lunatic! The original Mew-0 Project would have yielded-"

"Doctor, Mew-0's failures had no where near the potential of the Mew-1 prototype. You failed to deliver me the Mew-0 prototype. Enzo surpassed your shortcomings and developed a functioning Mew-1 prototype. I provided you with Enzo's resources. I had expected that the original Mew-0 Project-Director would at least be able to replicate Enzo's hasty Mew-1 results. Were my expectations… unfair?"

"No, Director. Of course not. But please, allow me to explain-"

"Where is my Mew-2 prototype, Doctor Fuji?"

"...In reassessment."

"Pray tell: why?"

"...Because I believe that in order to truly realize the Mew-2 Project's fullest potential, we need to scrap Enzo's original design, and start from scratch."

"I don't believe that the authority required to decommission projects rests with you, Doctor."

"Director, please listen to me! I've spent over half my life trying to unravel the secrets of the Lima Index! I've invested half of my life in the pursuit of discovering the original life form-"

"I'm not interested in discovering the original life form. My interests lie solely in realizing the ultimate life form. This isn't the Mew-0 Project, Doctor. We've progressed beyond that."

"But merging human DNA with the Mew-0 embryo-"

"Sacrilege can change the world, Doctor. Speaking of which, do be careful when replicating that zygote. Enzo just about destroyed it in the Mew-1 Project-"

"Just about?! That embryo represents my life's work! That culture is irreparably tainted by foreign DNA! I can barely defrost the zygote for mitosis without risking further malignant mutations! Enzo did destroy it!"

"Did you just interrupt me, Doctor?"

"...I apologize, Director. I- I don't know what came over me-"

"...You mentioned achieving a greater potential in the Mew-2 Project than Enzo did in the Mew-1 Project?"

"Yes. Yes, I did. I've already drafted a new formula. A formula which should eliminate the mutations that limited the Mew-1 prototype."

"And what manner of formula would the Project-Director of the Mew-2 Project suggest?"

"Enzo's design, though frankly ingenious, was doomed from the start because he failed to account for genetic rejection. Enzo simply did not procure a large enough sample size to adequately calculate the likelihood of cellular dissolution. I believe that a larger sample size, consisting of female specimens between the ages of eight and twelve, and male specimens between the ages of eleven and fourteen-"

"Are you suggesting human experimentation in the Mew-2 Project's alpha stage?"

"-The ages must be correlated to each gender's dissimilar growth rates-"

"Allow me to repeat myself, Doctor. Are you suggesting that the Mew-2 Project begins the alpha stage with genetic splicing performed on budding adolescent children?"

"That is precisely what I'm suggesting, Director. In the early stages of puberty, a child undergoes hormonal changes while maintaining their chromosome's-"

"I understand how puberty functions, Doctor. And I trust that you're only suggesting human experimentation in the alpha stage for a _discrete_ sample size?"

"..."

"How large a sample size, Doctor?"

"...An initial sample size of one-hundred-and-seventy-two medically selected specimens projects an estimated success rate of just under fifty-four percent-"

"Excuse me. I must interject for clarification on two points. An _initial_ sample size of _one-hundred-and-seventy-two_ children are to be medically evaluated for possible inclusion within the Mew-2 Project as candidates, before these children are discretely procured and delivered to your lab without arousing global suspicion? Not to mention that your projected success ratio with such a sample size just barely breaks even?"

"It would be in our best interests to evaluate a few smaller sample sizes for future acquisition-"

"And how am I to kidnap and transport hundreds of medically documented children to your lab in the Sevii Islands?"

"..."

"Doctor?"

"...Director… What you ask for impossible without…"

"..."

"..."

"...Very well."

"...Director?"

"I will have the initial sample size of one-hundred-and-seventy-two specimens assessed, abducted, and systematically sequestered at the Chronos Labs."

"Thank you, Director! Thank-"

"I expect that the margin of error projected in your calculations will be _reassessed_ in order to minimize the casualties, Doctor. A fifty-four percent chance of success is unacceptable."

"Oh course, Director! I'll have the staff prep the facilities accordingly!"

"You will have your initial sample size within the month. I do hope that you meet the Mew-2 Project with more urgency than you did the Mew-0 Project, Doctor Fuji…"

"Ha! I don't have Oak or Breitbarth meddling in my lab this time! The Mew-2 Project will be successful beyond even Enzo's wildest dreams! I guarantee it!"

"Very good, Doctor. And here I was just about to remind you of your last chance…"

"..."

"...I believe that our conclave has adjourned. Ending transmission."

"..."

"..."

"...For the love of God…"

"..."

"...I liked him better when he was just a Gym Leader…"

 _ **-.-**_

 _ **-The following is a personal record of specimen M2-S314. This contraband was seized by Warden Ackerman moments before Beta stage three's initiation.**_

I don't what the date is. I don't know where they've taken us. We were locked up in cargo containers for what feels like weeks. I think we were on a ship for that time. They fed us once a day, and they never answered any of our questions. We tried to find a way out, but we couldn't locate a single hole or gap in the container's walls. Then something changed. We started hearing lots of commotion outside of the container. Electric motors. The grunts of Pokemon. Men talking. Then the doors opened, but instead of handing us food, they threw in some kind of gas canister and closed the door. We woke up in the same cargo container about an hour ago. We all have burning eyes and throats from the gas. Most of us have headaches and feel nauseous as well. We had all just only started waking up when they began shepherding us into some kind of concrete hallway. I think we're underground.

I managed to hide my notebook in a trashcan before they stripped us down and smothered us all with an itchy white powder. Then they rinsed the powder off with cold water sprayed from hoses. They took our old clothes, and gave us orange jumpsuits to wear instead. They cut off all of my hair. All of it. I've been growing it out for the past year, and they just cut it down to the roots…

I'm in a concrete cell with twenty other children. We all have our own beds, and they announced that we'll be fed shortly. They drew my blood twice before they locked me in here.

I don't know what's going on!

I don't know who these people are!

Is this prison? Did we do something wrong?!

I'm scared… We're all scared...

My name is Alyssa Elise Vestich.

And if anyone finds this journal…

Please, find a way…

-Please...

 _...Please help us…_


	2. Chapter II: Bygone Memoirs

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 **The Saga of Kings:**

 **-.-.-.-**

" _ **Intersecting Parallels"**_

 **-v-**

 **.**

 _ **Written by:**_

Vile M.F. Slanders

 **.**

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 **Chapter 2: Bygone Memoirs**

 _-June 19th, 1523 post-Brink. Second entry._

For the love of God. It's finally here. When I requested a deep Frontier Aviation unit from the Devon Company, I was expecting the standard Braviary or a Pidgeot.

But I sure as hell didn't anticipate Devon sending me a bloody Aerodactyl!

I don't even know where to begin. The Aviation pilot's name is Jermond Gromalitou. A Hoenn native. A member of the Aerial tribe that originates from Fortree. But who gives a damn about the pilot?

There's a giant Aerodactyl right in front of me!

What a magnificent specimen! The Devon Company may not have matched Kanto's lead on fossil resurrection, but still…

-Just look at that wingspan!

I can't believe that I'm actually standing in the presence of this majestic creature!

Paleontologists and biologists have colluded together in order to define this foreign Cretaceous era species. Research conducted by Kanto's Cinnabar Labs have confirmed the presence of pseudodragon genes within this Biolith, meaning that the Aerodactyl species has superseded the Jurassic era Tyrantrum as the earliest known example of draconic evolution.

An even more fascinating discovery regarding this species of Biolith pertains to the evolutionary design. The Rhamphorhynchus's carapace is incredibly thin for an early member of the Bioliths. As a matter of fact, the Aerodactyl's carapace offers virtually nothing in terms of protection when compared to many of the foreign Cretaceous era's Bioliths. But the Aerodactyl species reigned dominant in their era, due to this same lackluster defense mechanism.

It's the evolutionary aeronautical equivalent of weight shedding. The Aerodactyl species are not only the earliest known pseudodragons, but they also stand uncontested as the earliest example of high-velocity Pokemon.

Aerodactyls provide the first fossil evidence of speed exploitation in favor of the era's almost universal focus on heavily weighted armors. Aerodactyls are the preliminary analogue representing monkind's first recorded species of "speed freaks," and sticking with the Mesozoic era's theme, Aerodactyl evolution took this singular trait to the extreme.

It's believed that the lack of hyperdiversity in the Mesozoic era's evolutionary designs is what led to the extinction of these monstrous beasts. New species of Cynodonts evolved with a far more diverse evolutionary design, and proved capable of making rapid adaptations to changes in the environment by behavioral adjustment alone. The tried and true hyperspecialized designs of the late Saurischians simply could not compete with the rise of the Cynodonts. Environmental discord eventually sorted the strong from the successful, and the foreign Saurischia species died off, paving the way for the Paleogene period.

But even the established facts fail to inspire me with more wonder than what I'm currently experiencing in this long-lost analogues's presence! Just look at those teeth!

I must confess that I am completely overwhelmed.

I will cease my needless ramblings and assist Jermond with loading our Aviation unit with my field equipment.

Goddamn, I should have packed more. This Aerodactyl has a flight-load tolerance of two-thousand kilograms…

 _...How on earth did such an incredible creature ever go extinct?!_

 _ **-.-**_

 _-June 19th, 1523 post-Brink. Third entry._

I take it all back. Aerodactyls should have remained extinct. My God, that was the single most terrifying and uncomfortable flight that I have ever experienced. Those Aviation saddles need a five-point safety harness and full body roost support, not just a pair of buckles and a molded leather cusp. Dear lord, I'll never walk properly again…

That's enough of my bellyaching, now let's move on to the good news.

We found it.

In the exact location that Clay Grantham specified.

And he was not exaggerating in the least.

A preliminary flyover provided visual evidence supporting Clay Grantham's claim of an intact Xenolith.

Regardless of this Xenolith's province, the intact specimen alone is a groundbreaking find. I can barely contain myself. It's real. It's right there. All of one kilometer away from our base camp.

An intact Xenolith.

Clay Grantham, wherever you are, I must express my fondest desire to pay you an exorbitant finder's fee. No. I'll do even better than that.

I hereby dub this crater and the Xenolith within, _Grantham's Meteorite_.

Thank you for your discovery, Clay Grantham. Your reward is immortality in the Xenopetrologist's archives.

You are most welcome.

As eager as I am to investigate the crash site, the fall of dusk and the need for an established base camp must take precedence. I will begin the investigations first thing tomorrow morning, weather permitting.

 _ **-.-**_

 _-June 24th, 1523 post-Brink. Fourth entry._

The rains be damned. I've only recently conducted a preliminary survey of the crash site, and just as I had suspected…

 _...The entire crater is irradiated!_

This explains Hammer's behavior around the crater! The Silane organism was detecting gamma exposure, probably emitted by the Xenolith!

Clay Grantham, your Aggron was attempting to protect you from a harmful dose of gamma radiation! This explains it all!

 _A radioactive Xenolith!_

This is far from an unheard of phenomenon, though the reading from my Geiger counter noted abnormally high concentrations of beta particle bombardment. Short term exposure should be harmless, provided that the radiation emissions do not escalate within a closer proximity to the Xenolith. Long term exposure could result in some unfortunate medical conditions. I have alerted Jermond to the hazardous nature of this discovery, and the imbecile insists that we relocate our base camp another kilometer east!

Does the fool even understand how radiation works?!

I will attempt to convince my shaken accomplice that the location of our base camp is quite secure. I won't mention my intentions of erecting a secondary camp on the very rim of the crater, which I have officially chronologized as P7-M9, or _Grantham's Crater._

Hopefully by tomorrow, Jermond will have come to his senses, and both he and his Aerodactyl can assist me with erecting Camp-2. For now, I must arrange and prep my environmental rig. I hate this bloody uncomfortable suit with a passion, but the alternative is irradiation, so I suppose that I can suffer the cumbersome rig once more…

 _ **-.-**_

 _-June 25th, 1523 post-Brink. Fifth entry._

Oh my God. I can't even begin to explain… I still can't believe it…

 _-How could this have happened?!_

Those Devon fools! Why couldn't they have just sent a Braviary!? Why couldn't they have just provided me with the bare essentials, instead of showing off their fossil revival technologies to all of northwestern Hoenn?!

Jermond is dead. There's not even a scrap left of him to bury…

...Oh my God…

...How could this have happened?

 _ **-.-**_

 _-June 25th, 1523 post-Brink. Sixth entry._

I will attempt to explain the events pertaining to Jermond's death in a professional and concise manner.

At eight-thirty am AWST, I; Doctor Roush, and my Devon deep Frontier pilot, Jermond Gromalitou; landed at the rim of site P7-M9 with our Devon provided Aviation unit.

-A Goddamn Aerodactyl.

We had only just landed at the outer perimeter of the site, and were in the process of relieving our Aviation unit of its burden, when the aforementioned Aerodactyl began to express profound symptoms of agitation. Jermond successfully calmed his Aviation unit, before we both continued to erect Camp-2 under the watchful static of my Geiger counter.

At roughly nine-forty-five am AWST, my Geiger counter inexplicably spiked due to a massive emission of gamma radiation. This coincided with a sudden display of panic from our stationary Aviation unit.

I should mention at this point, that unless Devon's genome structure vastly differs from Cinnabar's; Aerodactyls are not endowed with radiation sensory organs, or a silane genetic code that alerts an organism to the presence of harmful gamma emissions.

I harbor my suspicions that our Aviation unit wasn't reacting to the sudden spike in radiation, but to some other unobserved stimuli that accompanied the radioactive emission.

Either way, our Aviation unit became quite… aggressive when its pilot attempted to coerce it into obedience. We had chained the Aerodactyl to a robust peg hammered deep within the earth as is standard protocol when resting one's mount for an extended period.

But the chain was simply not enough.

Moments before the Aerodactyl broke free from its binding, Jermond struck his Aviation unit with a particularly hard crack of his whip, and…

...The Aerodactyl…

- _Devon's Aerodactyl…_

 _..._ Retaliated to Jermond's blow.

The Goddamned monster swallowed him alive. It never even bothered to chew. One moment, Jermond was screaming in its jaws…

...And after a particularly brutal ragdolling, the Fortree native just disappeared.

I thought that Devon's Aerodactyl was going to kill me next. It was certainly expressing hostility to my presence. But the instant it broke the chain, the Aerodactyl took flight, and proceeded easterly at a breakneck pace.

Leaving me here, stranded at site P7-M9.

Stranded.

My long distance radio stationed in the base camp is no longer functioning. My Geiger counter detects residual gamma irradiation at the base camp and surrounding areas. I suspect that the inexplicable spike in radiation levels originating from site P7-M9 may have reached farther than what I initially perceived to be possible. But whatever upset the Aerodactyl, the unknown factor that was able to inspired a panic response in a pseudodragon…

...Also seems to have destroyed most of the circuitry in both Camp-2 and base camp.

I can think of only one culprit that could possibly be responsible for these peculiar events.

An EM emission projecting such extreme wavelengths that it fried all electronics within a kilometer's radius of site P7-M9 at the very least, and jolted the more sensitive neural system of Devon's Aerodactyl.

An EM emission that accompanied the radiation spike.

An EM emission that likely originated from the irradiated Xenolith.

And if my hypothesis is correct…

...Then this Xenolith's cosmological properties exceed anything priorly encountered by science.

 _ **-.-**_

 _-June 26th, 1523 post-Brink. Seventh entry_

I've managed to repair my radio, though unfortunately I lack the the instruments required to repair the broadcasting platform; limiting the radio's effective range to just four kilometers. No where near enough range to establish contact with any of the Ranger's Frontier Outposts or the even farther flung human settlements. I've put a distress call on a loop, in hopes that some deep Frontier Ranger patrol or prospector stumbles across the broad frequency, and relays my coordinates and situation to the proper authorities.

I don't dare risk a venture through the Frontier and back to Fallarbor Town. I'm no Trainer, and I haven't touched a pokeball since my freshmen year in the University. You don't need to be a statistical engineer to calculate the odds of me surviving a safari through the Frontier. The feral Pokemon would kill and eat me within the first hour.

Which brings me to another curious observation I've made in regards to site P7-M9.

The lack of feral Pokemon.

Site P7-M9 is eerily devoid of any hints denoting a Pokemon's recent habitation. The area is completely silent, and not a footprint nor a discarded carcass betrays a single notion of feral Pokemon activities.

As paradoxical as the assertion sounds, the irradiated and highly unpredictable site of P7-M9 provides my best chance of survival. Though when I consider the apparent natural aversion that Pokemon express towards the site, primordial instinct causes me to wonder…

...Is there some other force hidden within that Xenolith? Some other force that I need be cautious of?

 _ **-.-**_

 _-June 27th, 1523 post-Brink. Eighth entry._

A quick perusal of my rations and filtered water reserves has bolstered my confidence. We entered the Frontier with sufficient provisions for a week long stake out incorporating two adult human males and one colossal Aerodactyl. Though the Aerodactyl's sustenance is of questionable taste, the nutritional value cannot be understated. I can adequately survive on these provisions for at least a month. Which is more than enough time for Devon and that idiot Professor Cozmo to realize that something must have gone wrong in my venture.

I merely need to wait out the duration here in the relative safety of site P7-M9. My only concern at this point is comfort.

-I'm wearing the environmental rig twenty-four-seven. I'm not taking any chances with radiation. Only a fool would ignore the potential for another drastic spike in gamma emissions.

So now the only article I have left to spend my copious amounts of time on, adheres to the edicts of my pre-established agenda for embarking on this foray into the deep Frontier.

Tonight, before sundown, I will enter the crater of site P7-M9 to accurately gauge the dimensions of the Xenolith, and to collect some specimens for research in Camp-2.

 _ **-.-**_

 _-June 27th, 1523 post-Brink. Ninth entry._

Unbelievable.

I must say it again!

- _Unbelievable!_

This Xenolith's elemental and compound composition is completely unprecedented! There's material presences possessing electron counts that defy mankind's established periodic table of elements! There's an entire host of new elements contained within this very rock! I will mention some of the elements that I did recognize, which includes high concentrations of a meteorite's typical silicon and iron composition, though the existence of undiscovered isotopes permeates the entire lattice structure!

This Xenolith is equivalent to the discovery of null-matter and dead-time! No! It's even greater than that! This is the single most astounding phenomenon to have graced the earth since the Brink Collapse itself!

This one rock could rewrite the entire periodic table of elements! Who knows what properties some of these materials conceal! Grantham's Meteorite is a gold mine of extraterrestrial minerals! I can only imagine what natural forces shaped the composition of this stone!

Which of course leads me to an irrational assumption, that I must beg your pardon for, but my euphoria simply cannot be repressed: this Xenolith represents an extraterrestrial province originating far beyond the scope of our pre-Brink cosmological awareness! This Xenolith could have entered our atmosphere after having traveled billions upon billions of lightyears away from its point of origin! Possibly a galaxy far-flung from the outer reaches of our own Milky Way!

A stone from another galaxy! A journey whose duration has spanned the rise and fall of stars!

Oh, what a find!

Oh, what a beautiful day for all of mankind!

I cannot contain myself! I'm grinning like a virgin schoolboy! I'm dancing for joy in this bleak and oppressive environmental rig!

 _-Unbelievable!_

 _ **-.-**_

 _-June 28th, 1523 post-Brink. Tenth entry._

I returned to site P7-M9's Xenolith first thing in the morning. I barely slept last night for all the giddiness. I decided to risk damaging the specimen by extracting a core sample. The operation proceeded smoothly, until the bore struck the three-fourths mark. I encounter a sudden lack in resistance, before I preceded to carefully extracted the bore. Only to discover a rather peculiar culprit for the lack of material tension.

A viscous dark fluid began to ooze from the borehole, as if the contents of the Xenolith's core were under pressure. I quickly collected as much of the fluid that I could, in all the sterile containment I had access to, before stopping the leak with a bit of cork. I immediately returned to Camp-2's research tent in order to perform analysis of the viscous material. And my microscopes revealed something astonishing…

 _Cells. Silane cells._

 _The remains of an organism foreign to our own galaxy!_

I may have originally succumbed to exaggeration when I likened this Xenolith's significance to the Brink Collapse; but oh, how the irony has struck me cold with disbelief!

 _It was no exaggeration! Like the Brink Collapse before it, this Xenolith has brought evidence of an alien life form to our planet!_

I will confess that I am no Biologist, so if the practitioners of that noble field will forgive my minorly educated observations, I shall now relate my dutiful findings.

The cells in question are silane in origin, denoting a silicon based life form. I have confirmed the heavy concentrations of ammonia, hydrogen, and silicone within the dead cell's structure, which feeds my analysis's claim of a silane organism.

Though my definition of the specimens as traditional cells may be a gross misuse of the zoological vernacular, as I have made note of an incredibly simple carbon cysts surrounding the the outer membrane of the "cell." Further analysis on the sample has suggested an incomplete silane genetic structure, which bears a certain resemblance to the T4 Bacteriophage's carbon-based RNA structure.

In short, this organism is far from complex. This organism is so simplistic in design that it eludes the common definition of life.

This organism in my initial review, represents the very first documented silane virus to have ever been unearthed by mankind.

 _-A silicon based virus!_

 _From another galaxy!_

 _Unbelievable!_

 _ **-.-**_

 _ **(-)**_

 _ **-.-**_

Deary Diary. This is my second entry.

It's been three days since they imprisoned us here. I only know that it has been three days thanks to the clock in the cafeteria. I thought that there was only a couple dozen of us here. I thought that this might have been a camp our parents sent us off to without telling us.

But there's hundreds of us here! Hundreds of kids my own age! At not one of us knows why we're being held prisoner here! We're not allowed to talk with anyone outside of our dorms. The guards will hit us with their batons if we try talking to others in the cafeteria.

Everyone has tried speaking with guards, but they don't answer us. One boy got all angry with one of the guards, and began yelling at him. But the guard didn't bat an eye. Not until the boy tried to hit him.

They beat him. Five adults all teamed up to beat a twelve year old boy to a pulp. He could barely walk when they were done with him. He couldn't even see through the swelling bruises rising over his eyes. He couldn't even breath without drooling blood…

No one has tried talking to the guards since. The only adult voice that we hear comes over a PA system, instructing numerical codes to report to the internment facilities at once. These numerical codes… They're on our orange jumpsuits. They tattooed them onto our necks.

We don't have names in this place. We're not even people to the adults.

We're just numbers. Numbers being called one at a time to the internment facilities.

They just called M2-S313. Before that, it was M2-S312.

My code says M2-S314.

Please… Please don't call me next…

 _ **-.-**_

Dear Diary. This is my third entry.

My number was called.

It wasn't as bad as I feared it would be. The internment facilities is staffed by adults in white lab coats, not just guards with batons. They're doctors, and they actually spoke to me.

I asked them what was going on, I asked them where my parents were, I asked them why all these children were being held here.

And a kindly old man who called himself Doctor Fuji gave me a sucker and explained everything.

Our parents enrolled us in a preparation course. Just incase another monster like TH tries to open the Brink again, the government of Kanto is sponsoring a hands-on education primer for children. We're going to be trained on how to survive a Brink Collapse! How exciting!

Doctor Fuji told me that I wouldn't be able to contact my parents for another three months, just because I need to build up a tolerance to separation anxiety. Life after a Brink Collapse is extremely stressful, and I'll need to do my best to resist the anxiety in order to keep my dorm's morale up!

Doctor Fuji also explained to me that on top of mental conditioning, they'll also train us physically so that we can hunt Pokemon for food with only spears and bows if need be!

While I don't like the idea of hurting Pokemon, I wouldn't mind being physically conditioned for hunting!

Doctor Fuji also mentioned that several new vaccinations were developed as a precautionary measure against widespread exposure to foreign bacteria from the Brink, just incase we need to worry about new viral infections. I don't really understand what that means, but we're going to be the first human beings to receive these vaccinations!

...Although when I asked about needles, Doctor Fuji just laughed. The sound of his laughter reminded me a little of my grandfather's laugh. Cheery. Patient. Pleased. And just a little sad…

Doctor Fuji told me that there will be some needles, but he'll hold my hand if I want him to when they administer the vaccinations. I wasn't so sure about that, but Doctor Fuji assures me that there won't be all that many needles.

...I really hope that there won't be lots of needles. I hate needles.

After I had finished my sucker, old man Fuji sent me off with a pretty nurse from his medical staff for a private examination. The nurse is a foreigner, but I can't place her accent. She was very kind, and though she warned me that some of the examination might feel a bit invasive, it really wasn't all that bad.

After the medical examination, Doctor Fuji gave me another sucker and asked me to finish it before I returned to the dorms. I'm the only kid who received two suckers, and Doctor Fuji doesn't want the others to get jealous.

It's going to be hard, Diary. I know that it's going to be hard. But when I finally get to call my parents…

...I can tell them that I know how to survive a Brink Collapse!

 _ **-.-**_

Dear Diary. This is my fourth entry.

What a rough day.

Just like Doctor Fuji told me that we would, we've started physical training today. Our instructor is named Doctor Flint. He's an old surgeon from the Ranger Corps. When we found out that Doctor Flint served in the Rangers, someone had to ask Doctor Flint if he knew the Bastard.

Doctor Flint smiled from ear to ear and said that he and the Bastard served together in the Reassembly following the Second Brink Collapse!

Doctor Flint even said that he and the Bastard shared drinks after the Reclamation of Goldenrod! He drank with the Bastard! _Doctor Flint actually drank with the Bastard!_

We were all pretty impressed, and we had no end of questions regarding the Bastard. One of the boys just wouldn't shut up about the Bastard's _Midgar,_ and he claimed to have actually have seen the giant Serpent flying over his hometown of Mauville!

 _-As if!_ Everybody knows that the Bastard hates cities! There's no way that the Midgar would fly over Mauville without toppling one or two skyscrapers!

There were so many people talking at once about the Bastard and the Midgar, that Doctor Flint actually had to shout over us to make himself heard. Doctor Flint has a very _loud_ voice. After we all settled down, Doctor Flint told us that we were to remain silent as he trained us in grass drills. I didn't know what grass drills were until Doctor Flint instructed us in them, but now I do.

And boy, do I hate grass drills…

When we were finished with PT, Doctor Flint sent us to the showers and told us to report to the cafeteria in ten minutes. I don't like the showers. They make us wash in groups, and the water is always cold. I asked our dorm chaperon why we have to shower in groups, and she told me that life after a Brink Collapse will force us to give up certain liberties, like privacy. She said that we need to desensitize ourselves to the lack of privacy now, so that we're ready for it should the Brink ever collapse again.

I really don't feel comfortable being naked with a group of other girls in a cold shower, but this all a part of our post-Brink Collapse survival curriculum I guess…

The food in the cafeteria isn't the best. It's like school food, only they closely moderate the proportions that we eat. Our dorm chaperon explained that this is called "rationing." It's a survival tactic that we can use to ensure that every member of the community receives the nutrients they require to perform their tasks. The medical staff has calculated our individual caloric and vitamin intakes according to our metabolic rates, activity levels, and anxiety levels.

I'm not complaining too much about the amount of food they expect me to eat, but the dorm chaperon told me that I wouldn't be allowed to return to the dorm until I had finished all of my spinach. I hate spinach…

Now I'm getting ready for bed. I'm sore from grass drills, my skin feels waxy from the cold water and scentless soap, and my stomach feels all kinds of icky from having to eat the spinach. So goodnight, Diary. I'll see you tomorrow.

 _-P.S._ It's not as much fun learning how to survive a Brink Collapse as I thought it would be…

 _ **-.-**_

Dear Diary. This my fifth entry.

- _Needles_.

Yuk!

They drew my blood again today! I hated it! Doctor Fuji wasn't there, but the pretty nurse who gave me the medical examination still held my hand. But it didn't do much. It's not the prick of the needle that bothers me! It's the feeling of compression that seizes the crook of your elbow that makes my stomach turn! They took a lot of my blood! A whole a syringe full! What do they need that much blood for?!

I tried not to cry. I really did. But I couldn't help it. When I saw that syringe filling with my blood, I started to panic. Nurse Alice; that's the nurse who held my hand and gave me a medical exam, held me tight and just giggled. She thought that it was funny! How could losing that much blood be funny?!

I felt a little woozy after that. Nurse Alice gave me sucker and told me to drink a lot of juice. She told me that I did well, and that my parents would have been proud of me.

I hope so. Mom gets a little upset when I cry, and daddy likes to tease me when I tear up.

...I really want to see my parents soon…

 _ **-.-**_

Dear Diary. This is my sixth entry.

More grass drills today, followed by the first vaccine administration. Getting poked by needles twice in two days is a bit much. Doctor Fuji was there, and he did hold my hand through the injection. He laughed when I started crying too, but it was a friendly laugh, and he brushed away my tears. I don't know what it is about that old man. He just seems so familiar. Like he's everyone's grandfather.

Doctor Fuji told me that he was proud of me. Told me that he had a special feeling about me. Told me that he thought that I might be the "One".

I didn't know what "One" he was talking about, so I asked him. Doctor Fuji got this sad look in his eye, right before he started laughing again in that grandfatherly way of his.

Doctor Fuji told me that I was special. Told me that I had the potential, the potential to be the one that they were looking for.

That didn't answer my question, so I asked him again. What "One?"

Doctor Fuji sighed, and patted me on the shoulder.

And then he told me.

Doctor Fuji told me that I had the potential to guide humanity into a new era of prosperity.

The guards took me back to the dorms right after that, and I still feel a little confused.

What did Doctor Fuji mean when he said that I had the potential to guide humanity into a new era of prosperity?

 _ **-.-**_

Dear Diary. This is my seventh entry.

I feel so sick…

We're all sick.

I can barely move on my bed. There's medical staff everywhere, taking everybody's temperatures and drawing blood. I could barely tell that it was Nurse Alice who was attending me. I could barely see anything through the blur. I could barely speak past my swollen tongue.

I couldn't even feel the needles. There were so many needles, and I couldn't feel a single one. It just hurts so much. My entire body still feels like it's on fire!

My face is all swollen up and covered in a rash, and the rest of me isn't faring much better. My fingers are so chubby now that I can barely wrap my hands around the pen in order to write in you, Diary!

Some of my dorm's beds are empty. There was twenty of us yesterday. Now there's seventeen. The Doctors rushed three of us out, while barking to the guards to prep more beds in the intensive care unit.

I don't remember the three other kid's names, but I hope that they're okay…

 _ **-.-**_

Dear Diary. This is my eighth entry.

I'm feeling better today. The swelling has gone down, and they pulled out all my IVs. I can stomach fluids again, though they want to keep me off solid food until they're sure that I've cleared the woods.

Two of the kids that were rushed into intensive care came back today. I asked them about what happened to the third one, and they told me that he had to go home because he was too unfit for the program. The Doctors said that his parents were extremely cross with him. The Doctors also said that his parents promised to severely punish their child for dropping out of the program.

That poor kid must have some mean parents. My mom and daddy would never punish me for getting sick…

 _ **-.-**_

Dear Diary. This is my ninth entry.

I tried eating solid food today. I threw it up only a few minutes after I swallowed it. Apparently, we had a reaction to the vaccine. It's perfectly normal, according to Doctor Fuji. The foreign strains of weakened bacteria that was used in the vaccines put up a really big fight, but our superior immunity systems prevailed. Doctor Fuji congratulated us all on our fortitude, and promised a pizza party for the entire program; once everyone was feeling better that is.

But I don't know if I want to be a part of this program anymore…

 _ **-.-**_

Dear Diary. This is my tenth entry.

I met someone today. Another girl from my dorm who is also named Alyssa. It wasn't the best way to meet a person, but what could I do? Okay. Fine. I might have been puking again, when the other Alyssa came over to pat my back.

It's the first time since I've arrived here that another one of the kids has reached out to me. The other Alyssa found out that we shared a name, and she wanted know more about me.

So we talked. We talked about our families, and this program, and the Doctors and the guards; and then we started talking about Ponytas and Skittys and shoes.

You know, Diary. Girl talk.

It felt good to talk with the other Alyssa. It felt normal. We were actually giggling about some of the boys in our dorm, and then we made the boys all nervous by telling jokes about which ones we'd kiss first.

They just called curfew over the PA system. The other Alyssa asked me if I would talk to her again tomorrow. I told her that I would love to talk to her tomorrow. The other Alyssa told me goodnight, and wished me that I'd get better.

She seems really nice, Diary. I hope that I've found a friend…

 _ **...**_

 _ **-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**_

 _ **...**_

 _ **WARNING**_ **: This section contains references to events that have yet to have been covered by the TSoK core trilogy. Some attentive viewers might regard these references as "spoilers." Do not read the above if you wish for certain elements of the TSoK core trilogy's plot to remain anonymous.**

 _-P.S. Like I give a damn._


	3. Chapter III: The Fate of Gods

.

 _ **-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**_

 **The Saga of Kings:**

 **-.-.-.-**

" _ **Intersecting Parallels"**_

 **-v-**

 **.**

 _ **Written by:**_

Vile M.F. Slanders

 **.**

 _ **-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**_

 **Chapter 3: The Fate of Gods**

 _-June 29th, 1523 post-Brink. Eleventh entry._

I dreamed that I was standing upon a lonely stone, silently gliding through an infinitely black and empty sea. Tiny lights twinkled far in the distance, and when I reached out to them, my sight was obscured by the shadow of my own hand.

I stood upon this stone, this vessel, this fallen legacy of grief and despair. This sole constant in the unimaginable void that I drifted through. My sole companion through this sea of tortured hope, the hope born from those distant and ever shining lights.

Those lights, untold eons old, stood starkly against the dark of this vacuum; yet even so, I knew them to be nothing more than fading epitaphs to the dead worlds that had been delivered unto oblivion by one final flare of light.

Worlds that had come to ruin, long before the lights had burned themselves hollow and dry; lights that had burned until their cores were cold, dark, and heavy.

Dead worlds. Shattered worlds. Grave worlds. Worlds just like mine.

I clung to the dead core of my world. Held onto the dreadful memoirs as if they could breath tainted life into this fragment of a lost hope.

I was afraid. I was terrified. Every conceived moment of my existence was cast beneath the inescapable shadow of doubt.

Could one of those lights betray this doubt? Could one of those lights reveal a new hope?

Did I even deserve hope?

Ever wasting. Ever burning. Ever casting. Ever dimming.

I was just another light, twinkling the epitaph of my world for all the universe to see.

Just the stark silhouette of a long dead hope.

Just the final bright flash of a cold and dying light.

 _ **-.-**_

 _-June 29th, 1523 post-Brink. Twelfth entry._

I've just finished reading my prior entry for the fourth time. I don't recall ever writing that entry, and yet profoundly…

...I can recall that dream…

I must be experiencing something of a minor mental-breakdown. Lord knows, anyone in my position would find themselves standing upon the precipice of madness as well.

I was only recently driven from my home by my own kin, and betrayed by the false pretenses of a new beginning with a capable colleague.

I watched as a living human being was reduced to one last primordial cry of aid, before he disappeared into the gullet of a resurrected monstrosity.

For over a week now, I've been utterly cut off from society and all of its conveniences by forty-three kilometers of impassable terrain and hostile organisms.

I've been converting every avenue of my being into a single analogue, an analogue that could revolutionize the world that we know…

...And yet I can do nothing for myself. Nothing but sit here and waste away beside this rock.

My lonely companion. My one constant. The only hope I have in this desolate and inhospitable place…

Arceus above! I am going insane! Good lord, as if I required the prior analogy to open my troubled eyes!

The proof stands incontestable when the pages are written in blood!

You see?!

Heh…

...I needed that. I needed something ridiculous to laugh at.

Well, regardless of the madness it inspires, I must leave this journal now, and return to my precious rock.

If I had but an iota of the equipment from my old lab in Sinnoh, I would have turned this meteorite into a Goddamned aeroplane by now. The wonders just keep on coming, and I know that there are more to be uncovered. I'm saving every specimen I collect, securing every grain for future study. I know that my field equipment isn't geared for an extensive analysis, so every sample thus far procured likely covets tantalizing secrets for a more precise mechanical eye to discern.

Enough of my rambling! I've gone feverish with the anticipation again!

To the rock!

 _ **-.-**_

 _-June 31st, 1523 post-Brink. Thirteenth entry._

It seems that there are some repercussions to be suffered when one spends so much time in the presence of an irradiated Xenolith. Some rather dire repercussions that manifest themselves in the most unseemly of ways.

Today, I woke up to discover that my hair had clogged my environmental rig's rebreather. At first, I was startled by the sudden growth, for not even last night, the length of my longest hair barely exceeded eight centimeters.

And then I realized that my hair hadn't explosively grown out of its roots.

It had fallen out.

And then I noticed just how ill I felt.

-Radiation sickness.

It's not something that I had prepared for.

I'm having difficulty stomaching fluids, and a pervasive fatigue has numbed me to my very bones. I'm going to have to forestall any further research on the Xenolith, or its samples, until I recover.

If I recover.

I must be honest with myself if I am to deter my imagination from entertaining the dreaded scene of my own mortality.

There's a distinct likelihood that I will not recover. It is very possible that my condition will instead deteriorate.

Nevertheless, I aim to endure, so let's see what hand life deals me next.

 _ **-.-**_

 _-July 2nd, 1523 post-Brink. Fourteenth entry._

I dreamed of the day when I first opened my eyes. I looked up past the membranous veil of confusion and witnessed shapes moving within my conscious sight.

Shapes. Moving shapes. Whispering shapes. Living shapes.

Who were they, these shapes? Why did they touch me and hurt me? Why did they twist and poke, stab and cut, stitch and mend me?

Could they not hear my screams? Could they not feel my fear? Could not one of these living shapes guide me through this fog?

Was I to suffer alone in this existence of pain and uncertainty?

And then she woke me.

And when she whispered in my ear…

...I could understand her.

They had made me. I was created from raw elements, fashioned into a living shape by their hands. I had been envisioned similar to their own image, though such an image was altered in its parameters, for my purpose differed from their own.

They had been born with the purpose to create. They had been given shapes in which to raise new forms.

And I?

I had been created by them to undo all shapes. I had been fashioned in such a form so as to unmake everything that they could create.

I had been born with the purpose to destroy.

But why? Why can I not create as well? Why was my purpose dissimilar from their own?

And then she told me. She told me why they had created me with a purpose to destroy.

They had created something monstrous. Something wild and uncontrollable. Something with a purpose to destroy my creators.

Something that I had been created to destroy.

They had created me to save them.

Their greatest child, raising the blade to defend its failing parents.

I was engineered to be their Savior. I was born to protect them with Destruction. I was created to be their Saviour of Destruction.

 _ **-.-**_

 _-July 4th, 1523 post-Brink. Fifteenth entry._

The headache is killing me. I'm suffering from a constant shortness of breath. And I haven't eaten or drank anything for two days now. I can feel it inside of me. The cold, dark, and heavy.

I'm dying, I'm sure of it. Yes, I've read my former entry! No, I didn't write that one either!

...But I dreamed it…

Every time the sleep takes hold, I feel it rising in my subconscious mind!

The dreams! Those foul and terrible dreams! They're not my memories! They're not me!

I was born to a manslut and a crackhead, not conceived within a petri dish!

Dear God, death would be mercy if I am truly succumbing to insanity…

I would rather feed the worms than lose sight of who I am!

I'm a scientist! A man of rational thought! A scholar of knowledge's pursuit itself!

I may not be a physician in any sense of the word, but I must apply my cognitive functions to something other than that bloody rock!

If Aristotle could pioneer the scientific method with only a fucking stone and an olive branch, then my genius and modern devices can discern a treatment for what ails me in like kind!

How did Robert Hooke pioneer Cell Theory?! With the aid of a bloody SEM? Of course not! He did it with a crudely polished piece of glass, the power of observation, and raw human ingenuity!

I can educate myself just as the forefathers of science educated themselves!

I can overcome any adversity!

I am human nature!

I am the embodiment of total dominance achieved through logical deduction!

 _-I AM MAN!_

 _ **-.-**_

 _-July 5th, 1523 post-Brink. Sixteenth entry._

Oh dear God.

What have I done?

What have I done?!

It isn't radiation sickness.

Accursed God, I wish now that it was…

The virus. The virus from the Xenolith. It's…

...What did I wake up?

I am dead. I've already accepted this fact. I've only begun charting how this organism infects its host, and I can already project the nature of my own dreadful end.

But I have an obligation. I, as a man, have an obligation to my species, and indeed the very world that birthed me. I cannot let this terrible thing spread out to the rest of the world. It must be contained. I've shut off my distress signal. I've moved all of my equipment, save for a remote transponder, from the base camp and into Camp-2.

I'm going to die. I've accepted this. But when I die, I will die alone.

No. Not quite. I will not die alone.

The virus will die with its last host as well.

I've ceased all of my current research on the Xenolith, and devoted all of my academic attentions to the only specimen of relevance that remains at site P7-M9.

Patient Zero.

Myself.

I have an obligation to this world. I must protect it. I will assuredly die in a manner most gruesome and hideously inhumane…

...But I will die knowing peace, for my every wasting fiber and my every tortured breath will be spent in the pursuit of eliminating this threat.

If the worst should come to pass, and the virus survives my post mortem, then the uncontaminated transponder I left at the base camp will relay my findings to anyone who stumbles upon this hellish pit. I hope that what little I am able to glean about this virus with what little time it leaves me with assists in countering any possible epidemics that may arise from my hubris.

...Oh, sweet mother earth...

 _...Oh, God of man, forgive me…_

 _ **-.-**_

 _-July 7th, 1523 post-Brink. Seventeenth entry._

As terrible as this thing is, it still fascinates me to no end.

Here I am, the reincarnation of Louis XVI: praising the very blade that will kill me.

Initially, I assumed that the organism was long dead, and its apparent preservation was due to the inhospitable environment of space, the pressurized cavity in which it laid, and the incredibly robust and ageless genetic structures intrinsic to silane life forms.

But it was not dead. Merely dormant. And just as shocking as its Gya old survival in the irradiated vacuum of space, this silane virus's infection process is fully compatible with carbon-based lifeforms.

-How could evolution possibly envision such diversity?! Silicon-based life and carbon-based life could never even congregate in nature! The stimuli required to shape this virus is impossible to achieve in the natural world!

This cannot be a design of nature. This virus couldn't have evolved in a natural environment. Carbon-based lifeforms and silicon-based lifeforms cannot evolve in the same environment. The vast majority of elements required for supporting silicon-based life is either toxic or mutagenic to carbon-based organisms. And without evolution providing a roundabout, silicon-based organisms cannot exist in the oxygen rich environment required for supporting carbon-based life.

This virus is artificial. It has to be!

Nature could never have provided a medium capable of engineering this marvelous plague!

As far as I'm concerned, this virus doesn't merely represent a life form foreign to our own world...

 _...This virus is proof of intelligent life existing somewhere else in the universe!_

But I digress from the dire root of the matter. I must relay my findings with due haste.

The mechanism that drives this virus is fascinating.

Its initial cellular infection is almost identical to the standard operations of one of earth's bacteriophages.

The virus injects a living cell with its own RNA, which then invades the host cell's DNA structure, replacing several of the host cell's protein strains with virus's own foreign code.

The viral stain then feeds a line of code that forces the cell to enter a state of agitated mitosis, essentially using the host cell's own method of reproduction to achieve the virus's multiplication via replicating the same line of infected DNA ad nauseam, until the host cells inevitably expire. And then thousands of new viral codes are released from the dead host cells, each seeking to infect their own hosts.

But that is where this alien virus's similarities with earth's indigenous bacteriophages ends.

After a few cycles of typical viral replication, a new form of virus is born. A virus that specializes in infecting a particular DNA structure.

The host's DNA structure.

While viral specialization is a well documented natural phenomenon, the means that this alien virus utilizes is completely new to science.

It ceases to mindlessly replicate itself and its environment into extinction, and begins to supplement certain portions of its host's DNA with its own. And the cells that result from this infection are neither replications of the virus or its host cell.

These are entirely new cells, hybrids of two different genetic codes.

Cellular assimilation.

Symbiotic coexistence at the molecular level achieved through a viral code and a multicelled complex organism.

Two foreign organisms coming together as one. The impossible love child of silicon-based life and its alternative carbon-based life.

A completely new life form.

 _-Absolutely unbelievable._

These new cells still maintain most of their viral features. An adaptable carbon cyst serves the new cell as an exterior form of protection, the apparatus required to infect other cells remains physiologically functional, and the simple RNA structure continues to persist without a possible fault developing in its basic design…

...While the new cell also maintains the complex cell's capability to convert matter into energy, store cellular materials, mount complex and synergized structured relationships with its like cells, and of course, the holy grail that defines all life, _independent reproduction._

I can't believe it.

My own body…

My own cells are serving as one of the progenitors in both the conception and birth of a new life form.

I must confess, I'm actually stricken by some morbid paternal sentiment right now.

I know that this will kill me. I know that this new life form threatens all life upon this earth, and indeed, any life that exists beyond our own world…

Yet I can't help but cherish this miraculous child nurturing itself upon my cancer…

 _ **-.-**_

 _-July 8th, 1523 post-Brink. Eighteenth entry._

I dreamed of a war, a war that I fought against monsters born from a tear within the sky.

They opened that gash. They tore down that Brink.

They created that mother of all monsters.

My creators.

And they created me to destroy that gash.

I cannot die. They made me as such. I have fallen countless times, and yet every beast that brings me down always serves as the vessel of my rebirth.

And every time that I am reborn, I take some part of my progenitor with me.

Every time that a foe proves greater than me, I return wielding the same weapons that fell me.

With my every kill, I grow stronger.

With my every death, I am reborn mightier still.

They created me this way.

They sought to fashion the ultimate life form, and they succeeded.

They created an immortal entity greater than any that has ever come before it.

They gave this immortal entity a purpose to destroy.

And so I have become my creators' Savior of Destruction.

But she…

...She…

The creator who told of my purpose.

The creator who holds me against her breast.

The creator who gave me a name…

She wants me to be more than what I was born to be.

...My mother…

...She wants me to be a creator like her…

 _ **-.-**_

 _-July 9th, 1523 post-Brink. Nineteenth entry._

The dreams won't stop. They come at me when I'm awake now. I can barely focus on my goal. I can barely-

 _ **-.-**_

 _-July 9th, 1523 post-Brink. Twentieth entry._

I dreamed of my mother, the mother who gave purpose.

The mother who gave me life.

The mother who gave me a name.

The mother who gave me love…

Oh mother…

...Why?

Why did you give me your love?

You told me to take it!

You told me it was your last gift!

You told me that it was the engine that powered creation!

...Why?

...Why did you have to die so that I could feel love?

...Why did I have to kill you so that I could know this love…

It hurts, mother…

It hurts…

Is this love? Is this the engine that creates? Is the pain inside of me, this cold, dark, and heavy at my core your love?

I miss you, mother…

...I miss you so much…

...Why did you want me to feel this pain?

Why did you give me your love, and then take yourself away?

Mother…

...What am I without you?

 _ **-.-**_

 _-July 9th, 1523 post-Brink. Twenty-First entry._

whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?whatismyname?

 _ **-.-**_

 _-July 9th, 1523 post-Brink. Twenty-Second entry._

Why can't I remember my name?

 _ **-.-**_

 _-July 11th, 1523 post-Brink. Twenty-Third entry._

They're not dreams. They're memories. The virus's memories.

That silane code… Genetic memory? Is it even possible for that simplistic code to have recorded such complex recollections?

I don't know, but I'm beginning to believe…

Oh my God.

They killed themselves.

The creators...

...They killed themselves?!

Why?!

How could they-

 _ **-.-**_

 _-July 11th, 1523 post-Brink. Twenty-Fourth entry._

I dreamed of the days preceding the end. Those days that heralded my world's death.

I cannot stop them. For every million that I slay, ten million more spill from the Brink. And they've grown stronger. They have returned. The mighty ones. The ones that reshaped the world before my birth.

I've slain the White Mountain hundreds of times, but he always comes forth from the Brink, unchained and unmarred; born again to split the world in two. The Winged Hands from the Deep knows me as his death, but he fears me not in life, for his hatred will see him reborn anew. The Waker of Flames cannot resist my lethal advance, and yet still he persists through our each and every encounter. And the Singer of Storms will never defeat me again, but I shall never know victory at his end.

I cannot stop them. I cannot save my creators.

I cannot do it, mother…

...I cannot hold back the tide of destruction.

And it's all your fault…

...You didn't leave me with your love, mother…

...You left me with your pain.

You have weakened me! Robbed me of my purpose! Destroyed my creators and sent this world unto its death!

I hate you, mother!

I hate you!

I will destroy it all…

I will kill everything…

I WILL KILL EVERYTHING, MOTHER!

I cannot be a Savior! I cannot know love!

I will be the Destruction of Destruction itself! I will tear this world that birthed you and my creators into the very Brink!

You all created these monsters!

You all created your own end!

And I will be the one to create the final Destruction!

I will kill the monsters and my creators in one cruel blow!

This your pain, mother!

This is the pain that you left your child with!

This is what became of your sweet little Deoxys, when it learned of the agony that hides within your love!

This will kill me, mother!

This will kill me as well!

And I don't care!

I don't care about the monsters!

I don't care about my creators!

I don't care about this world!

I don't care about my purpose!

I just want it to end!

I just want to stop feeling this pain…

...I just want to know your love again, mother…

...I just want to see you again…

 _ **-.-**_

 _-July 12th, 1523 post-Brink. Twenty-Fifth entry._

They opened the Brink…

Oh my God.

 _They opened the Brink!_

We opened the Brink!

They created a weapon, a weapon that they hoped could close the Brink…

...And that weapon killed them…

Arceus above…

We're walking in their footsteps. We're treading the same path that destroyed the creators! No wonder why the Bastard refuses to seal the Brink! He knows what will happen if we try to close that portal!

Regigigas. Luigia. Groudon. Kyogre. Palkia. Dialga.

The Terra Divide…

The cataclysmic event that almost destroyed our world fourteen-hundred years ago! The same event that TH tried to replicate when he aggravated the Brink!

The Old Gods will return! And not even the ultimate life form can save us from the inevitable end! Humanity's own hubris will destroy our world!

Oh my God…

...I can't believe it.

-We are the creators!

...We just haven't realized our ultimate life form yet…

 _ **-.-**_

 _-July 13th, 1523 post-Brink. Final entry._

These are the last words that I will ever write. This the last entry in this journal that Doctor Xavier Tiberius Rosch will ever pen by his own hand, and under his own will.

In a few short hours, the infection will completely assimilate my remaining neurological tissues, and this mutated form will lose all semblance of its original humanity, both physically and mentally.

Most of my bodily tissues have become prehensile and elastically amorphous, and despite my form's alien composition and unnatural appearance…

...My altered nerves are still transmitting outwards stimuli to my uninfected brain.

The assimilated cells have developed micro EM emitters and receivers, miniscule and simplistic radio towers for the layman's definition. These micro EM emitters and receivers have never once been seen, nor do I doubt conceived of, within the zoological archives.

It's a wireless inter-cellular neural network, operating at unprecedented biological speeds and communicating in complex transmissions that are absolutely impossible achieve in the natural world; all of which provides evidence supporting my hypothesis regarding this virus's origins. This virus is most certainly an artificially engineered biological device hundreds of years beyond our own genome construction technologies.

The rate of cellular adaption is absolutely impossible for any living thing on earth to match. The assimilated cells can perform a multitude of cellular tasks every bit as complex and just as elaborate as an entire human organism can.

...It's a sentient virus.

A virus capable of rationalizing the observable changes in its environment at the molecular level, and adjusting both its behavior and its genetic composition to adapt to these changes nigh-instantaneously.

A virus that produces cells capable of replicating the same EM generating functions of a complex Psionic organism, and mounting coordinated EM fluctuations with every other assimilated cell, exponentially increasing the magnitude of the virus's gross EM spectrum.

Every cell is a EM emitter. Every cell communicates with the whole organism at the speed of alternating radiant energy. Through its cellular network, the whole organism perceives its environment at the molecular level, and the whole organism possess both the neurological processes and psionic organs required to manipulate its environment at the molecular level.

 _-It's a sentient psionic virus._

And I…

...I am no longer its host.

I'm no longer me.

I'm no longer a man...

...I am the virus...

...I am Deoxys.

 _ **-.-**_

 _-July 14th, 1523 post-Brink. Post-Final entry._

Kill them.

Kill them all.

Kill everything.

 _ **-.-**_

- _ **This ends the personal log of Doctor Roush. No physical trace of Doctor Roush has been found since the Ranger Corps mustered a search of site P7-M9's surrounding Frontier, and the late Doctor Roush has been officially pronounced "dead" by the Fallarbor coroner. The Devon Aerodactyl mentioned in the personal logs was reclaimed by Devon personnel, and a review of its excrement revealed a partially digested whole human skeleton, possessing a dental profile matching a Jermond Gromalitou's medical records. This confirms Doctor Roush's claim of corporate Pokemon manslaughter. The Aerodactyl has since been put down, and the Devon Company's CEO is scheduled to be tried in court for 2nd degree corporate negligence.**_

 _ **Site P7-M9 has been reopened for private investigation. The Xenolith mentioned in Doctor Roush's personal log was discovered at site P7-M9, and the meteorite was recovered by Professor Cozmo after a panel of experts confirmed that there existed no evidence of any viral organisms within the hollowed core, or upon the surface of the Xenolith.**_

 _ **Though Doctor Roush's logs proved accurate regarding the elemental composition of the Xenolith in question, not a trace of his "virus" has been discovered in either of site P7-M9's two camps, the Doctor's research equipment, or any other surface or medium that would have come in contact with the aforementioned "virus." As well as the lack of viral material, both the panel of experts and Professor Cozmo have concluded that though the Xenolith does indeed possess a variety of radioactive signatures, not one isotope uncovered has demonstrated anywhere near Doctor Roush's claims of "massive gamma emissions."**_

 _ **It is the professional opinion of the Chief Investigator that the late Doctor Roush did indeed suffer from a mental collapse after witnessing the traumatizing death of Jermond Gromalitou, and virtually everything written in Doctor Roush's personal log following that harrowing event existed only within the broken mind of what has been recognised by the scientific community as "a wildly elaborate genius."**_

 _ **Basing their final verdict off of Doctor Roush's morbid obsession with his own death, and the self-destructive admissions of his alternate personality, henceforth referred to as "Deoxys," the Chief Investigator and Coroner stated in their educated thesis that:**_

" _ **Following an absolute mental collapse, it seems more than likely that Doctor Roush walked out into the Frontier, and met his unfortunate end in the maws of one of the local man-eating species of feral mon. This explanation provides sound reasoning for the absence of Doctor Roush's remains."**_

 _ **On a final note, the aforementioned Clay Grantham was located and informed of both the event and the late Doctor Roush's expressed wish to name site P7-M9 and the Xenolith exhumed from the crater after the Frontiersman that discovered it. Clay Grantham politely refused the late Doctor Roush's honor, and suggested that site P7-M9 and its Xenolith be named after Doctor Xavier Tiberius Roush instead. However, Professor Cozmo of Fallarbor Town has since dubbed both site P7-M9 and its Xenolith, "Cozmo's Crater" and "Cozmo's Meteorite" respectively. Clay Grantham refuses to file for legal rights to name the location and the Xenolith, stating thusly:**_

" _ **Nevermind it. I don't think that Doctor Roush would want for that dreadful place to bear his likeness for all the years to come anyway. Let that stuck-up git from Fallarbor Town name his cursed rock and its hell-hole after himself. He deserves every vile connotation that can be drawn from that haunted site."**_

 **...**

 _ **-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**_

…

 _ **WARNING: The material above may contain spoilers!**_

 _-P.S. I'm having way too much fun with this. Can't you tell?_


	4. Chapter IV: The Birth of Gods

.

 _ **-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**_

 **The Saga of Kings:**

 **-.-.-.-**

" _ **Intersecting Parallels"**_

 **-v-**

 **.**

 _ **Written by:**_

Vile M.F. Slanders

 **.**

 _ **-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**_

 **Chapter 4: The Birth of Gods**

 _ **-Personal Log of Doctor Fuji, Final entry of the Mew-2 Project**_

 _ **Date: August 9th, 1523 post-Brink**_

 _ **Location: Sevii Islands, Four Island Town**_

 _ **Subject: Absolvement**_

We dreamed of creating the ultimate life form.

A organism powerful enough to match the very description of God himself.

And we succeeded.

Beyond our wildest dreams…

...Beyond our worst nightmares.

It is with no small pride that I report: Project Mew-2 has successfully engineered the prototype model. And now, I must also dutifully report the catastrophic loss of life and the absolute destruction of the Chronos Labs that befell mankind on the eve of our greatest of achievements.

My medical staff, the surgeons and gene therapists, the toxicologists, the psionicologists, the development team, the lab technicians, the genetic engineers, the Chronos security force…

...Are all dead.

The Chronos Labs have been completely obliterated. The entire island that sequestered our subterranean facilities has been reduced to atomized debris, tainting the Sevii Sea with the separated molecular remains of a minor landmass.

We knew that it would be more powerful than anything man has ever engineered before it. We knew of the astronomical potential that could be achieved by psionic subatomic manipulation. We knew that we were stealing fire from the Gods back when we initiated the Mew-0 Project.

...But we never once imagined that humanity would raise an entity from those stolen flames who could stand even higher than the Old Gods themselves.

We succeeded, Director. We've engineered the first artificial Lima-Three. We have designed the ultimate weapon…

...And we have lost control of it.

The catastrophe that destroyed Chronos Island was indeed perpetrated by the Mew-2 prototype. I may not have been physically present to witness the ruin, but I was receiving a live stream of the events in question from the Chronos Labs as they occurred.

Doctor Jacobs, the Mew-2 Project's head anesthesiologist, was charged with the proper intravenous administration of sodium thiopental. The estimated dosage was met well within the pre-established metabolic parameters, edging on the heavy end of the projection as a precautionary measure.

Chief Operator Tyson and his team of technicians drained amniotic tank seven, and removed the life-support interface from from M2-S314. Doctor Tiller and Doctor Elise proceeded to reverse M2-S314's artificially induced coma, while Doctor Jacobs outfitted M2-S314 with an intravenous feed of dry saline.

M2-S314 startled the entire staff when it regained conscious as soon as the IV broke the skin. As I mentioned before, it was a dry saline feed, as the coma-reversion required M2-S314's neurological systems to be operating at the minimum equivalency of idle capacity.

Fortunately for the staff, M2-S314 was disorientated from extended cognitive repression. After a brief struggle, no major injuries were reported to have afflicted either the staff or M2-S314. Following its submission, M2-S314 was simply content to stare at its own digits and wail while Doctor Jacobs injected the sodium thiopental into the IV solution.

After the estimated fifty second delay, M2-S314 began to succumb to the anesthetic, and within the following ten minutes, Doctor Jacobs pronounced M2-S314's condition ideal for transit.

M2-S314 was relocated to the Chronos Restinghammer facilities, and Chief Operator Tyson and his team began to outfit M2-S314 with the Chronos Labs' adaptation of the Mew-1 neural inhibitor harness, while Doctor Jacobs continued to monitor M2-S314's neural activity for any anomalous readings that might hint at a premature return to consciousness.

Chief Operator Tyson and his team had only just fastened the breastplate of the harness to M2-S314's torso, when Doctor Jacobs declared emergency protocol four. The entire on-hold staff immediately reported to the Chronos Restinghammer facilities to assist the outfitting team with the developing emergency.

M2-S314 had succumbed to a febrile seizure, and the prototype's inate panic response threatened to rouse M2-S314 from the anesthetic-induced-unconsciousness.

The entire crew had only just arrived when a sudden surge of electromagnetic activity scrambled my remote stream of the operation.

I had only just finished a stunning dinner with one of my public associates on Four Island. I was following the live stream from the privacy of my yacht. We were on the return journey to Chronos Island when I lost contact with Restinghammer.

Moments after my display was wiped clean by static, my eyes were drawn from the screen and onto the distant horizon, as all hell rose from the sea in a massive globe of brilliant light.

I'm still partially blinded from that flare, but even at a distance that was sufficient enough to conceal Chronos Island beneath the curvature of the earth, I could still tell exactly where that ungodly light had originated from.

When my yacht reached the nautical coordinates of Chronos Island, the skipper immediately turned bow to stern, and hastened from the site at once. It wasn't long after I had overcome my own shock, that the bosun alerted me to the reason behind our unauthorized retreat.

My yacht's onboard atmospheric telemetry had detected a massive expanse of irradiated ocean. And though the GPS stated that we were but a few short knots from Chronos Island's dock…

...Not a trace of the island could been seen anywhere across the visible span of the sea.

We did it.

We engineered a life form capable of psionic subatomic manipulation.

Chronos Island and all of its inhabitants were completely atomized in the passage of a single second.

We have succeeded.

We have created the ultimate life form.

We dared to stand amongst the Gods, and measure ourselves as their superiors.

...And now we are all going to hell for it.

 _ **-.-**_

Dear Diary. This is my eleventh entry.

I'm sorry that I haven't written in you for so long, Diary. The other Alyssa has been keeping me busy.

We don't have too much to do in between our PT courses and the scheduled cafeteria meals, but there are some board games and books in the dorm for us to play with and read. The other Alyssa is really good at chess! We've played like a hundred games, and I've only won six times! But the other Alyssa is showing me how to play better. When we first started playing, the other Alyssa wipe the floor with me in ten minutes! Now though, we can make a game last for hours! And every time that we play, the other Alyssa loses more and more pieces!

The other Alyssa says that I'm getting almost as good as her brother, and that maybe when we finally get to go back home, I'll be so good that I thrash her brother in a game of chess like she can!

I didn't learn about it until recently, but the other Alyssa is from Saffron City as well! We both live in the same city! We both have the same name! We both have the same interests!

I found a friend, Diary! I found a friend that I won't ever lose! We've already made plans for some slumber parties when we go back home!

This place isn't so bad now that I have a friend, Diary. The other Alyssa feels the same way. The dorm chaperon doesn't mind us making friends, which is nice. I was worried that with all this place's strict rules, that they wouldn't want us to make friends.

But I don't have to worry about that now. The other Alyssa and I have promised that no matter what, we'll always stick together.

Goodbye, Diary. I promise that I'll write in you sometime soon.

 _ **-.-**_

Dear Diary. This is my twelfth entry.

They administered the next round of vaccines today. We're all worried about getting sick again. Doctor Fuji never gave us that pizza party he promised, but I guess he's really busy. I haven't seen any of the medical staff for weeks. Just the guards, the dorm chaperons, and the other kids.

Alyssa and I have started a chess club. We have eight kids from our dorm to play with now.

There's Allen, Michael, Thomas, Sarah, Lee, Callie, Brandon, and Julie. Allen is the kid from Mauville who claimed to see the Midgar in real life, but everyone thinks that Allen is just a loudmouth. Michael is really shy and kind of cute, but if I smile at him for too long he starts turning an ugly shade of red. Thomas is really funny. He can do some really good impersonations of Bugs-Lopunny. I wanted to write down some of Thomas's jokes, but they just don't sound funny on paper. Or when I try to tell them. Oh well…

Sarah is really quiet, and she still cries in her sleep. Sarah really misses her family, and thinks that we're going to be stuck here forever. I used to tease Sarah a lot, but I started feeling bad after I made her cry, so I stopped razzing her so much.

Then there's Lee. He's almost as funny as Thomas, and he's ten times more annoying than Allen! I can't even make Lee blush when I threaten to kiss him! He just puckers up and starts blowing raspberries at me! Boys are so gross!

Callie is a bit dumpy and mean, but she's actually really good at drawing! She makes some really good Salamence and Garchomp pictures! I once asked her if she would draw me an Altaria, but Callie just wrinkled up her nose at me. "What kind of baby wants a picture of a stupid Altaria? None of the Gym Leaders or the Elite Four use them in competition because they're so weak!" She actually said that to me! Who cares about competition? I just wanted a picture of a pretty Altaria. I guess Callie is kind of a snoot.

Brandon is really nice. He's kinda skinny and almost as quiet as Sarah, but he always helps everyone else out in the dorm when they need it. I really like Brandon. I want to take Brandon home with me and make him eat some of mom's cooking, though. He's just way too skinny.

Julie is really weird. She comes from Lavender Town, so that might have something to do with it. I mean, she doesn't do anything mean, or say much of anything at all, but…

Julie will just stare at you all creepy-like for hours. I'm not joking! She'll just sit on her bed and do nothing but stare at someone for hours at a time! And when she does talk, she always says something really, really weird. The last time Julie said something to me, she mumbled something about Skeeter's empty bed! How does she know about Skeeter?! I've never talked about daddy's Luxio to anyone in the dorm before! And what did Julie mean by an "Empty bed?"

...The people of Lavender Town are just spooky…

Either way, that's the chess club. The other Alyssa and I are the group's President and Queen. We don't really boss anyone around. We just try to teach them how to play chess as well as we can. We all have a lot of fun, and despite everyone having their differences, we all think of each other as friends.

It's dinner time now, Diary. I'll write in you later, okay?

 _ **-.-**_

Dear Diary. This is my thirteenth entry.

We all got sick again.

It was even worse this time. I don't know how long I was out. I couldn't even think for all the pressure pounding in my head. It was pretty bad, Diary. When I could finally open my eyes again, I noticed that a lot of our dorm's beds were empty. I guess more kids got sent home for being too unfit for the program again. Our chess club members are all still here thankfully, but no one is feeling well enough to leave our beds.

I wish I was too unfit for the program. I really want to see my parents again.

Just one more month to go, Diary. Just one more month before they send us home.

 _ **-.-**_

Dear Diary. This is my fourteenth entry.

Something isn't right. We hadn't even recovered from the last vaccine, and they're already administering a third one. Some of us tried to fight the Doctors off, but the guards got involved and restrained the kids that tried to resist.

Nurse Alice was the one who gave our dorm the third vaccine. When it was my turn, I begged her not to make me sick again. I begged her not to stick me with more needles. But she didn't listen to me. She didn't even look me in the eyes! She just waved a guard over, and had him pin me down! I wasn't fighting her! Why did Nurse Alice do that to me?!

It felt wrong. It felt like something an adult shouldn't do…

...Now we're just waiting, Diary.

Now we're just waiting to get sick.

 _ **-.-**_

...Diary?

I-

We-

Something isn't right-

We-

...We're not kids anymore-

We-

- _We don't even look human!_

What did they do to us, Diary?! What are they doing to us!? My face… That's not my face… _That's not my face!_

 _ **-.-**_

We aren't kids anymore. They changed us. Our eyes are huge, and our faces are all long and pointy. We almost look like hairless Persians! Are we turning into Pokemon?!

I'm trying to stay calm, Diary. I'm trying really hard to stay calm for Alyssa. She looks just like me now. Big head. Big eyes. Weird mouth. Long arms and stubby fingers. We can't walk anymore. Our legs… _Our legs are twisting backwards!_

I can't do it, Diary! I can't look at my legs! They make me feel sick! I can't even talk right! I sound all stupid and mumbly when I try to speak!

My skin is all blistery and its covered in rashes… And it hurts, Diary…

I hurt everywhere…

...Mom? Daddy? Did you really enroll us in this? Did you really send us here to become monsters?

 _ **-.-**_

It's after curfew, Diary. The lights are off, but I can still see in the dark. The headache won't go away, and it only gets worse when I open my eyes…

But I don't want to close them. Not right now.

Alyssa…

She's here, Diary. She's sleeping in my arms.

She crawled from her bed. Crawled on her swollen and bleeding hands all the way from across the dorm…

She crawled over here just to be with me, Diary…

She cried herself to sleep in my arms. I tried to comfort her, but we can't speak in words anymore…

Alyssa looks just like me. She looks just like the same ugly and diseased monster that I look like…

But she's so beautiful, Diary…

She's so beautiful…

I'm staining your pages, Diary… I'm sorry… I just can't stop crying…

My Alyssa… My friend…

My Alyssa…

 _ **-.-**_

They tried to take her away from me!

She struggled all night just to get across the dorm, and then they put her back in her bed!

I tried to fight them! I tried to protect my Alyssa! But the guards held me down while they took her away!

I hate them! I hate them! She's the only thing I have here! Alyssa is the only thing I have! And they took her away from me!

I screamed at them, but my voice sounded all moany and gurgly! What kind of monsters are we?! We can't even walk! We can't even fight guards armed with only batons!

We're weak! Weaker than we were when we were kids! What kind of monsters are they turning us into?!

I tried telling Alyssa that she'd be okay, I tried reassuring her that everything was going to be fine, but then they started strapping her into her bed!

And then I got _angry…_

And I don't know what happened next…

I don't know how it happened…

One moment, I was in my bed, being pinned by a guard.

The next moment, I was in Alyssa's bed, covering her with my body…

The guards backed away from us. Everything in the dorm went quiet for a moment. Everything just went silent, except for my ragged breathing, and Alyssa's weeping. Then the guards just dropped their batons. And then they ran.

They ran away from me.

I don't know what I did. I don't know how I moved across the room so fast without using a single muscle…

I don't how it happened…

...But we're together again, Diary.

Alyssa and I are together again.

 _ **-.-**_

Thomas is dead. So is Allen. And Lee. And Michael.

I watched them put their stiff bodies in bags. I watched as they pulled the zipper shut over those wide and staring dead eyes.

No one has been sent home. Everyone who is too unfit for the program has died.

The sickness killed them.

The shots killed them.

They killed them.

The Doctors killed them.

We're not supposed to be monsters. We're suppose to be kids…

... _We are still kids..._

...But not to them.

The doctors don't even hide it anymore. They don't even act like we're human. Not one of them will speak to me. Not one of them will smile or laugh. Not one of them will look me in the eyes.

They won't look me in the eyes.

 _-They can't look me in the eyes._

Monster's eyes or not, my eyes can still speak.

And my eyes tell them all that I hate them all.

 _My eyes tell them all that they're the real monsters._

Alyssa is still with me. They haven't tried to take her away from me again. We've been holding onto each other for weeks now. Alyssa still cries herself to sleep, but I won't shed my tears while she's awake.

I need to be strong for her. I need to protect my Alyssa.

 _ **-.-**_

Something happened last night, Diary. Something happened between Alyssa and I.

I don't really know what it was. I don't really understand what we did.

But I know that it was right. I know that it was love.

I love her, Diary. I love her more than anything else that I've ever loved in my life. I know this. I can see it. I can see it when I look into her eyes…

I can feel it. I can feel it in my stomach. I can feel it in my chest. I can feel it in my throat. I can feel it in my breath…

I'm crying again, Diary. I'm crying again. I can't stop. She's just so beautiful. She's just so amazing…

...Last night… It almost felt like…

...Almost like…

...I've never felt that feeling before…

I need her, Diary. I need Alyssa now. I've always needed her. So long as I have her, I don't feel like a monster anymore. So long as I have my Alyssa, I don't feel broken…

...As long as I have my Alyssa, I can feel beautiful…

 _ **-.-**_

Eleven months ago, there were twenty children who lived in this dorm. Eight months ago, that number was reduced to just nine children.

Now there's only two.

The others all died.

I have to look back through my Diary, just to learn their names again. I forgot that they had names. I forgot that they were children like me…

She's still with me. Alyssa is still here, right beside me.

I don't even care about the needles anymore. There have been so many needles, that I don't even feel any pain when they jab me with them. They've injected me with so many different poisons in these last few horrible months, that I can't help but wonder why I'm still alive.

They've only made us even more monstrous in all of those lost months.

The blisters and rashes have almost completely faded away. Our skin is rubbery, cold, thick, and grey. Our legs almost work again, just not in the way that they once did. Our knees are backwards, and spread far apart, and our ankles are long and bend differently now.

Our fingers, toes, ears, noses…

...They all fell off long ago.

We have new fingers and toes now. Three thick fingers, on either hand, tipped in waxy cups. We have three toes on either foot. Two long forked toes stretching forward, and one bulbous toe curled up against our ankles.

Our heads don't even look like anything else I've ever seen before. Triangular, wide, long, sloped. We have two fleshy stubbed horns for ears, and slits for nostrils. Our mouths don't have cheeks anymore, and our teeth are tiny and sharp.

And we have tails.

Thick, heavy, clubbed, and bruise colored tails.

I wanted to grow up into a woman.

I wanted to blossom into a beautiful woman.

But there's nothing left of a girl on my body. Nothing that will ever blossom into something beautiful.

I'm a monster.

A little girl that was twisted into a monster.

And I don't care.

I don't care anymore…

Little girl, beautiful woman, or hideous monster... I'd still only care about one thing.

Alyssa.

She and I are lovers. I know what it is we do now. I know why it feels so good. I know what we're trying to do, even if we know that we'll never give the other a child. And I know that it isn't natural.

And I'm not ashamed.

I'm an unnatural monster. Why would I be ashamed of what I love?

Who I love, and how I express my love, is the only freedom that I have left.

And I give all of that love to my Alyssa. And my Alyssa gives me all of the love that I will ever need.

I belong to her. She belongs to me.

And that's all either of us wants anymore.

Because that's all we'll ever be allowed to have.

 _ **-.-**_

Alyssa is dead.

She died while we were sleeping.

She died in my arms, and I didn't even know until I woke up.

I won't let them take her away from me.

I won't let them put her in a bag too.

They'll have to kill me if they want to separate us.

...She's still so beautiful…

 _She's so beautiful…_

Shh, Alyssa…

Just sleep, my love…

...Just keep sleeping…

Your nightmare is over.

...They won't ever hurt you again.

...You won't ever wake up in this hell again…

...You won't ever wake up in my arms again…

...And now…

... _Now…_

...I'm all alone now…

 _ **-.-**_

They put me in a tank today. They put tubes down my throat, and jammed big needles into my veins. They wrapped me in a mesh cloth, and laid me down inside a tank. Then something went wrong. The tank was suppose to fill with fluid, but the fluid only rose about halfway up. So they drained the tank, and started pulling it apart. And they put me back into my bed. Put me back into my empty room. Just to wait until they could fix the broken tank.

And I let them.

I don't care.

I don't care about anything anymore.

I'm not Alyssa anymore.

Alyssa died. Alyssa died months ago.

I'm just a monster.

A monster waiting to die.

I just don't care.

I'm only writing this, because I think that I'll finally die soon.

I'm only writing this for Alyssa.

I'm only writing this for the girl that I loved.

I still remember you, Alyssa.

I still remember how beautiful you are.

You deserve to be remembered. You deserve to be forever.

When I finally close my eyes, and I dream of you…

...I hope that you're dreaming of me too.

I don't have long. I can feel them coming.

I can feel everything now.

And I just don't care.

Goodbye, Alyssa.

Goodbye, my love…

...Just…

...Just promise me…

...Promise me that you'll remember me…

 _ **-.-**_

 _ **-The previous contraband has been in the possession of M2-S314 since before her arrival at Chronos Labs. The Dormitory Chaperon in charge of monitoring Dorm Seven has been brought before a Tribunal for disciplinary action. Warden Ackerman was tasked with the destruction of these incriminating documents, but the order was rescinded by Doctor Fuji, the Project-Director of the Mew-2 Project.**_

 _ **Against ACE policies regarding the the proper disposal of compromising evidence, Doctor Fuji has added the Diary of M2-S314 to his own personal logs. When confronted by Chronos's Chief of Security about the document in question, Doctor Fuji provided the following statement, not so much in his defense, but more as his personal belief:**_

" _ **We have committed a great crime in the pursuit of performing a greater good. What we have done cannot be forgotten, should not be forgotten, and can never be forgiven. We took everything from these children. Robbed them of everything that they could have been. We stole their future from them… We stole our future from ourselves. Is this the world that we're trying to envision? A world without our future?"**_

" _ **At some point, we will atone for our sins. No matter the nobility of our goal, our inhumane means have corrupted the intended outcome. Man was never meant to stand amongst the Gods. Man was never meant to sacrifice their children for a dead world's fatal ideals."**_

" _ **Alyssa was right. A child knew better than an old man. They should be remembered. They deserve to be remembered. For it is not the wisdom or ingenuity of the old and bitter that defines our species, but rather, it is the child's love that we are born unto; the child's love that asks no questions and holds no doubts. It is the child's love that separates mankind from the monsters."**_

" _ **It is the child's love that we have forgotten."**_

" _ **They deserve to be remembered. They deserve to be forever."**_

 _ **...**_

 _ **-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**_

 _ **AUTHOR'S NOTE:**_ _I might have been cutting onions near the end of this chapter. I hope that you could feel their burn too._

 _-P.S. I don't think this story is finished yet. But I have my reservations about continuing it, just in case I somehow ruin it. Now, because I'm an arrogant bastard, I don't beg for reviews. So instead of begging for attention, I would rather request my viewers for their opinions._

 _-Should I continue this story, or leave it be?_

 _And when I ask for your opinion, would you be so kind as to extend me the courtesy of explaining why I should continue or close this story?_

 _I'm that torn up on this one, guys. And I could really use the feedback._


	5. Chapter V: Olympus Rising

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 **The Saga of Kings:**

 **-.-.-.-**

" _ **Intersecting Parallels"**_

 **-v-**

 **.**

 _ **Written by:**_

Vile M.F. Slanders

 **.**

 _ **-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**_

 **Chapter V: Olympus Rising**

There were twelve of us. Twelve who lived long enough to be put into the tanks. Twelve monsters who lived long enough to become more monstrous than all those who had died before us. We twelve were all connected to one another. We twelve all shared each others' thoughts. We twelve could all see into each others' lives.

I could feel the twelve's fear. I could feel their hatred. I could feel their despair.

And they could feel my apathy.

I didn't care. I didn't care about them, myself, the Doctors who tortured us, or even for the hundreds of children that had died around us.

I only cared for one thing. The one thing that mattered most to me. The one thing that I had already lost.

Alyssa.

My Alyssa.

I was still a child before she died. I was still beautiful inside. I had been growing cold to everything else, but I still had the one thing that I needed to be me.

...And then she died…

And the beauty within me became cold. Dark. And heavy.

I could feel everything...

But I couldn't care about anything…

I had nothing left to love…

I was number seven. I was number seven of the twelve. Dr. Fuji insisted that I be placed within tank seven. He secretly believed it would bring me luck.

But just like everything else that Doctor Fuji had ever given me, his luck was just another poisoned apple.

They thought that we were asleep, deeply asleep, but we weren't. We could feel everything. We just couldn't open our eyes.

We could feel everything, and as our waking-dream stretched on throughout the passing months…

...We began to feel even more.

And then, we started dying.

We started dying just like they had. Just like the children who had died before they could become as monstrous as we twelve were.

We started to die.

I had been waiting for this. I had been waiting for the nightmare to end, and the others were waiting for the end too.

We all wanted it to end.

We all wanted to die.

The Doctors began to worry. They didn't want to lose all of us. They couldn't lose all of us. We were too important to the Doctors now. They actually cared about us. We were the Doctor's children now. We were the legacy that they wished to leave behind…

...A monster's legacy of monsters.

The Doctors announced a triage. The Doctors determined which ones of the twelve were too far gone to save, and which ones of the twelve were still capable of carrying on their monstrous legacy.

And then one by one…

...The Doctors began to kill the others. The other ones just like me.

We felt them die. And then we mourned for our lives. They were free. Free from this hell. Free to dream whatever dreams they wanted to dream...

...And we were left behind.

The Doctors collected all the parts of the dead ones that had managed to resist the corruption. The Doctors harvested the dead ones for whatever parts they had that still functioned…

...And then the Doctors put those parts into the ones who still lived.

They removed the pieces of us that were failing, and put in the working parts that they had taken from the dead others.

The Doctors had killed the others, so that they could feed their lives to us.

Just so that some of us would still live.

...But we kept dying. One by one.

...Until there was only one of the twelve left alive.

Me.

I remember when the Doctors had to remove my rotting spine, and then they replaced it with the fresh bones and tissues that they had taken from one of the dead others. I remember when the Doctors cut my choking heart out from my own body, and I remember when they replaced it with a stolen heart that still beat.

I remember how two of we twelve were condemned to linger on in agony, as the Doctors siphoned the rich blood out of them, and then poured the two others' lives into the wilting me.

I remember how the other final one of the twelve, the one that had almost lived until the very end, I remember how the Doctors cut her into pieces while she still lived, and I remember how the Doctors then grafted all her living pieces into the dying me.

I became a monster made of dead monsters. A monster who was now once more completely alone.

But Doctor Fuji couldn't leave me alone. He had taken everything else away from me, and now he came to steal away my numbing solitude, and to poison my dreams with his own sentiments of guilt.

He read stories to the dreaming me. Doctor Fuji read children's stories to me, the me who he thought was asleep.

Fairy tales with princesses, knights, dragons, and evil wizards. These were Doctor Fuji's bedtime stories for the monster that he thought was asleep.

Those stories always progressed in the same way. The knight would slay the evil wizard's dragon, and then the knight would save the princess from the evil wizard, and then the princess would forgive the evil wizard, and then the evil wizard would become a good wizard, and then everyone would live happily ever after.

...The End.

And just like everything else that Doctor Fuji had ever told me, those endings were a lie.

There are no such things as happy endings.

But poor old Doctor Fuji actually believed that he was the evil wizard, and that I was the Princess. And just like everything else that Doctor Fuji had ever believed in…

...Those beliefs of his were all wrong.

Doctor Fuji was the knight, and I was the evil wizard's dragon. The princess was the world that Doctor Fuji wanted, and the evil wizard was everything that didn't understand the Doctor's dream.

The evil wizard's dragon was an obstacle between the knight and the princess, so the evil wizard's dragon didn't have a happy ending. And the knight was just a slave. A slave to the world that Doctor Fuji wanted, and the evil wizard…

...Was all of Doctor Fuji's regrets.

Doctor Fuji wanted a happy ever after ending.

Doctor Fuji wanted the princess to forgive him…

...But Doctor Fuji didn't want the dragon to forgive him.

Because dragons are monsters, and monsters aren't really people now are they?

No.

-We're not people.

People can love. People can be loved. People have love.

...And monsters have nothing…

 _ **-.-**_

 _ **(-)**_

 _ **-.-**_

Hope.

...Why did I ever believe in hope?

Hope is such a fickle thing. It's just a distant light, really. A light that you can only see across the vastest and blackest of endless empty expanses. A light that you can forever reach for and never truly hold. A light that blinds you with your own shadow whenever you grasp for that feeble and distant glow. The distant light that lies to you. The distant light that betrays every one of your fading hopes.

Hope is just an epitaph. Hope is just a soft glow that hides the bitter dark.

And here, on this world, hope has finally revealed its true self unto me.

They're here. All of them.

The monsters.

The creators.

They're all here to serve as the epitaph to my dead hope.

I had hoped for a new home. I had hoped for a new life. I had hoped for a peace that would never end, a peace that I had never known before. And I had hoped to find new hopes that would rise and fill the cold, dark, and heavy within me.

But they're here. They're all here.

This is my home. My old home. My dead home.

A reflection of the home that I destroyed.

This home is my punishment. This home is my purpose.

...To destroy all that bears shape, and to unmake all that takes form.

For I am the Savior of Destruction.

For I am the End of All Endings.

And I am the Destruction of Destruction itself.

...Mother…

...I was never meant to fashion a shape with your love.

I was created to destroy it.

 _ **-.-**_

 _ **-Personal Log of Doctor Fuji, New Objective: Reclaiming the Mew-2 Prototype**_

 _ **Date: August 11th, 1523 post-Brink**_

 _ **Location: Indigo Confederacy, Kanto; Saffron City**_

 _ **Subject: A Second Last Chance**_

So this is how the fates have colluded. I should've known. I should've known that this would happen. I've known _him_ for decades. Back before _he_ retired from his position as the ACE Director. Back when I taught a young Samuel Oak all that I knew of the Pokemon's Phylogenetic tree. Way back when Blaine Breitbarth and I were still friends.

Back when the four of us came together in order to recreate the original life form.

The Mew-0 Project. I honestly believed that it had cost me everything. And yet here I am.

Losing everything that I have left.

All for the Mew-2 Project.

I lost my friend in Breitbarth. I betrayed the young Samuel Oak. And the old and now reinstated ACE Director…

... _He_ left me for the dogs back then as well.

The Mew-0 Project was a failure. The Mew-0 embryo that we had designed from the root DNA codes of all known species of Pokemon could not come to gestation. We could not design an amniotic device capable of rearing the original life form. And I grew desperate. The apex of my life's work, so close and yet so far…

I betrayed my oath of silence, and I petitioned a series of discrete pleas to any and all of my dissociated colleagues who possessed the necessary theoretical resources for bringing the Mew-0 Project into fruition.

But as discrete as my pleas were…

...Some of my pleas' recipients weren't quite so keen in aiding in the development of such a dangerous project. And they committed their resources to the polar opposite of my expressed desire.

And when the public caught wind of our doings…

...When the world heard whispers of a man made Lima-Two…

The Mew-0 Project was abandoned. ACE cut all funding and proceeded to tie up every loose end connecting them to the incriminating Project. Blaine Breitbarth and Samuel Oak fled ACE's hitmen, and hid within the 1048th Indigo League Seasonal Finals in the roles of their pre-established publicized League contenders. ACE couldn't even hope to touch them while they garnered so much of the media's attention. And neither one of my old friends ever gave up that brilliant spotlight.

At the end of 1048th Indigo League Seasonal Finals, Samuel Oak defeated the Reigning Champion Blaine Breitbarth, and both the apt pupil and his renowned teacher achieved immortality within the Throne Room of the Indigo League. Oak appointed Breitbarth as his fourth on the Elite Four, and with that one defining bureaucratic maneuver, Oak and Breitbarth ensured that ACE would never possess the means required to overcome the pair when their combined genius was fortified and empowered by the League's media and their coffers.

And I…

...I, the betrayer…

...The boogeyman, Doctor Fuji...

...I fled into the shadows of society, and waited in misery for ACE to come find me.

But ACE never came for me. And after I had suffered the first three years of poverty and degrading anonymity, I began to believed that I had actually eluded ACE…

But ACE knew exactly where I was all along. But why ACE didn't just kill me like they had with all the other unprotected Mew-0 Project members wasn't made clear to me for longest and most undignified passage of time.

It wasn't until after the Bastard had risen to eminence, and struck down the former ACE Director with the aid of that cursed Devil of Kalos…

...It wasn't until after Zane Bastard had revealed Enzo's Mew-1 Project to the entire world…

...That _he_ decided to come out of his retirement, and reclaim his old Throne.

-The same ACE Director that I had served under in the Mew-0 Project.

And _he…_

... _He_ was quite earnest about picking up all the scattered pieces, and rearranging the puzzle into a design that suited his signature purposes.

And that was when ACE found me.

I was in Lavender Town back then, working as a simple Pokemon hospice Administrator. It was a tiny, poorly funded facility. Years before I had arrived, it had served as an orphanage for children, before the prior caretakers succumbed to the Lavender Field, and simply stopped ministering to their wards. I remember how the roof always leaked above my office's file cabinets, and I remember just how the floors creaked and shifted atop their rotting foundations.

It was the worst job of my life, made even more miserable by the hauntings born in the Lavender Field.

But it was secure. In Lavender Town, nobody cared about another old man eking out a meager living in a dilapidated medical facility. Nobody cared about the infamous Doctor Fuji murmured of in the old horror stories.

The people of Lavender Town were just content to worship their Ghosts and wither away in their own hell, just as the old man of the Pokemon Orphanage was content to hide within the flames of his own hell.

And then _he_ came to me…

...And then that black hearted monster dangled my life's work right beneath my nose like a carrot…

...And foolish old Doctor Fuji followed _him_ back out into the light.

I was given everything that I had been denied of for all these long years. ACE returned my lavish life of excess and luxury. They provided me with all the comforts that I'd once taken for granted in my youth, and within all of those opulent comforts, my aging body soon discovered an even greater pleasure still. And the only thing that ACE desired of me in payment for this bounty of paradise?

-Was that I finish the very same Project that I had envisioned and committed myself to, before I faulted and failed my own dream, and had since spent my wasting life in dire yearning to complete.

The Mew Project. Resurrected and revamped by Enzo's ingenious sacrifice.

The Mew-2 Project.

The focal agenda had been altered in the years of my abdication. We were no longer seeking the original life form. We knew that we couldn't recreate it. But as Enzo Davinci had shown us…

 _...We could still re-purpose it…_

I was educated on my own Project by a man who had never attended a University for so much as an Associate's Degree. Enzo Davinci was a genius beyond any man measured before him. I still can't believe the scale of his contributions and achievements in the fields of Psionicology and Genetic Engineering. Even for a man of his academic background, his appointed accolades will forever stand proudly alongside those serving in the echelon of scientific pursuits. It is a shame that I never once met him. Though after what happened to him during the Mew-1 Project…

...I must say that I am grateful to have never been able to identify a sympathetic human resemblance in that horrid tragedy…

In no small part, I committed myself to the Mew-2 Project on behalf of the inspiration that Enzo Davinci imparted within me by his example alone.

But when I learned of what was necessary to achieve psionic subatomic manipulation…

...And when I understood the cost of Enzo Davinci's sacrifice…

...My very soul grew cold with both the inhumanity and the pity.

But in spite of my own humanity, I proceeded down that dark path none the less.

And here we are.

Right back where the Mew-0 Project ended.

Only this time…

...I was given a second lease on my last chance.

 _He_ is the coldest bureaucrat that mankind has ever conceived. _He_ is the father of all Devils.

I should have known…

 _He_ doesn't care about morality. _He_ doesn't concern himself with restraint. It's all calculated gross equivalency in his capitalist brain. It's all about the investment, the risk, the expected yield, and the total return. It all boils down to profit with him. And it always has.

The Mew-2 Project was an investment. The risk was an apocalypse. The expected yield was omnipotence. And _his_ total return is as of yet to have been delivered in full.

 _He_ expects his payment from me, and even though the risk has multiplied exponentially…

... _He_ still doesn't care.

It's all a game to him. Either he wins, or we all lose.

Either _he_ will own the world…

... _Or no one else ever will._

I have been given one year to locate the Mew-2 prototype. I have but one year of which to hunt and shackle a Goddess. I have only one year to deliver _him_ his payment…

...And I know now that hiding won't save me from _him_. Or the encroaching calamity that I awoke when I dared to steal fire from the Gods...

If I die before the Mew-2 prototype is reclaimed…

...Then there is little doubt within my mind that the entire world will soon follow me unto oblivion.

I created that Goddess. I engineered the ultimate life form. I know what it is capable of. There won't be another Brink Collapse. There won't be another Terra Divide.

There will only be a dead world floating in the cold, dark, and heavy light of our own dying sun.

I'm not doing this for _him._

I'll take every resource that _he_ grants me, and I will convert them into _his_ hunt.

And I will find my lost Goddess. I will spare the world of her terrible power.

 _-And then I will bring Alyssa back home._

...In a morbid and shameful way, I am truly grateful that only one successful Mew-2 prototype arose from the final twelve…

...Had there been another...

-Oh, thank the stars above for it…

...Thank the merciful heavens that there's only one spiteful God on this beautiful blue world of earth.

 _ **...**_

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 _ **AUTHOR'S NOTE:**_ _The decision has been made. The story will progress. Slowly. Carefully. I've made the mistake of posting material that I knew I shouldn't have posted in the past, and I intend to avoid repeating that mistake with this story._

 _-So I need your help. I need to know if this feels like a story. My long time viewers are already well aware that I'm a sucker for criticism, and I invite anyone who feels like they something to say about this tale to contact me in the review section, or alternatively through the PM system if you wish for the matter to remain private._

 _Explanations for any concerns or problems are appreciated, as effective criticism constitutes of communication without any bars. Wring your spleen out on me if need be, but at the very least, provide me with the reason why._

 _Also as anyone who has provided me with criticism in the past can tell you, I'm notoriously bullheaded about specific literary elements. Chiefly my character's expressed morals, but provided that you let me perform their roles to the best of my LARPing skills, I'll gladly let you whine about my twisted and warped perspective on life. I may even chuckle a little bit about it._

 _-Jesus Christ, this is the single dirtiest "Author's Note" that I have ever written._

 _Cheers to all of you, and here's to a good depressing story._

 _ **-P.S.** The material above may contain spoilers pertaining to the TSoK core trilogy's plot. Yeah, I know that the joke's getting old. I just couldn't resist being a douche._


	6. Chapter VI: When Chronos Fell

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 **The Saga of Kings:**

 **-.-.-.-**

" _ **Intersecting Parallels"**_

 **-v-**

 **.**

 _ **Written by:**_

Vile M.F. Slanders

 **.**

 _ **-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**_

 **Chapter VI: When Chronos Fell**

 _ **-Personal Log of Doctor Fuji, Supplemental**_

 _ **Date: August 14th, 1523 post-Brink**_

 _ **Location: Indigo Confederacy, Kanto; Saffron City. Indigo's Department of Global Polarity Surveillance.**_

 _ **Subject: Remembering Alyssa**_

I always knew that she would survive the alpha stage. All it took was a single perusal of her genetic makeup to inspire me with no end of wonder.

Of all the children that we stole, Alyssa Vestich had by and far the most potential. Her genes were almost unnaturally fit, displaying the absolute minimum of protein discrepancies that could have harbored cancerous developments. Such healthy codes were scarce at mankind's zenith, and in this age of our endangerment, such codes are even fewer in occurrences and are valued as all the more precious. I was completely enamored with Alyssa Vestich's genetic profile. This single specimen's potential was simply too good to be true. It was as if God himself had delivered me his own scion.

When I looked at the medical records of Alyssa Vestich, all I could see was health and possibility, progress and achievement, prestige and culmination.

...But I never once saw a little girl. Not until I met her.

Three-hundred-and-thirteen children had come to me before her. Three-hundred-and-thirteen innocents who I had placated with lies and deceptions. Three-hundred-and-thirteen suckers served with smiles, accompanied by untold amounts of false reassurances and misleading mannerisms.

Three-hundred-and-thirteen frightened and impressionable children had come before Doctor Fuji to hear him announce their death sentences with a friendly laugh.

I thought that I had grown numb to it. I thought that I was desensitized to my own immorality. I thought that I had disabled my conscience in the pursuit of unbiased and unethical practicality.

And then I met the scion of God. Then I stood face to face with the very legacy that I had been dreaming of.

And it was then that I realized that Alyssa Vestich wasn't just an analogue of flawless protein enzymes and ribbons of unmarred genetic code.

Alyssa was a child. A daughter of man. A future mother. A living dreamer of mankind's future. A nearly endless collection of possibilities.

And so it fell to me to strip away every one of Alyssa's possibilities, until only one potential fate remained to weather the greatest cruelties of man.

Innocence. It's so easy for the old to bitterly laugh at the memory of it. But when living innocence is brought before the embittered's eyes…

...We can't help but weep for innocence's loss.

Alyssa was innocent. Before I twisted her, I can honestly believe that Alyssa had never once known hatred. Before I showed her the evil that resides within man, before I raped Alyssa of her innocence until a little girl was reduced to only angry tears and a wounded heart…

Alyssa was a true innocent. An unconditional expression of love.

A love that I stripped from her…

M2-S314. Alyssa Elise Vestich.

M2-S247. Alyssa Marie Holtz.

" _The Alyssas."_

I can't help but wonder at how those two became so close. There isn't an expressed doubt in my mind whatsoever that can contest the truth of my wicked part in their union. The lion's share of the Alyssas' inter-dependencies could only have culminated in such profound levels due to the inhumanities that I subjected them to.

But I never thought… I never even dreamed it possible… That such inter-dependencies could amalgamate as love.

Love. It was love. A child's love. A couple's love. Two innocents' love.

I knew that Alyssa Vestich was special. I knew that she had the single most adaptable genetic structure amongst all her peers who were similarly detained by the Mew-2 Project…

But when Alyssa Vestich demonstrated psychokinetic teleportation in the early phases of the alpha stage…

I realized that I had miscalculated just how special Alyssa Vestich really was.

It wasn't just my cruel genetic splicing that had triggered Alyssa Vestich's first psionic display.

It wasn't just Alyssa Vestich's innately superior DNA sequence.

It was Alyssa Holtz, and her plea for the girl that she loved, which had miraculously returned Alyssa Vestich to her side.

It was love.

None of the children were supposed to be capable of psionically operated quantum entanglement. That caliber of bio-EM reflex wasn't supposed to have been genetically activated until after the beta stage.

But I had forgotten to equate one major and prevalent variable into my formula:

 _-Evolution._

Pokemon evolution.

Their Para-Kingdom did not evolve on earth. Pokemon did not evolve with the same basic programming that all terran-indigenous life has descended from.

Pokemon evolve on the individual level. Rapid physiological mutations at the individual level is a genetic trait intrinsic to the Para-Kingdom. It is the defining trait that dictates the entire Para-Kingdom. It is the same trait that I have spent a lifetime chasing back to its origin, all the way back to the very first "Pokemon."

Mew.

The sire of all Pokemon. The creature that birthed the entire Para-Kingdom. The original life form that has been missing from the Pokemon fossil record since the Xeno-Proterozoic era.

The missing link between everything that is "Pokemon" and everything that is "Not."

The most unstable of mutants. The greatest of primordial anomalies. The very first God.

Mew.

Mew's individual evolutionary trait was passed down to all who descended from it. Even the species of static-form Pokemon, who lack the Para-Kingdom's dramatic displays of evolutionary bloom, still possess that one distinct trait.

And the scientific goal of the Mew-2 Project…

...Was to _create_ the artificial transitional link between homo sapiens and Mew.

The untapped and untold powers of Mew's individual evolutionary trait, married to the indomitable human will and our species's unparalleled rationalism.

Two of the strongest and smartest creatures in all of existence converging their genetic assets into one perfect template.

The ultimate life form.

The omnipotent sentience.

" _...Fuji's Children..."_

Mew-2.

Alyssa Vestich.

I had never factored in Pokemon evolution as a possible variable.

I had neglected to include the Para-Kingdom's individual evolutionary trait in my formula.

It had never occurred to me. Me, the cartographer of the Pokemon Phylogenetic tree himself! I only saw children when my guilty eyes fell upon them! My guilt blinded me to the danger! I forgot that these children were to become the transitional links between the human species and Mew!

When Alyssa Vestich and Alyssa Holtz were forcibly separated, the two girls suffered no undue amount of distress. And just as incredible stress can induce the evolutionary cycles in Pokemon…

...That same incredible duress induced the individual evolution of Alyssa Vestich.

She evolved almost instantaneously. Although no physiological changes occurred throughout her evolution, crucial dormant genes required for higher level bio-EM reflexes were activated, unlocking the Mew-2 prototype's innate psionic capabilities. In the span of just a few seconds, Alyssa Vestich had transitioned from a helpless girl and transcended into a lethal monster. Alyssa Vestich had access to powers well beyond her own limited sphere of reckoning. Powers that could change the physical world in any way that Alyssa Vestich deemed fit. And what did Alyssa Vestich do with this newfound and terrible power?

-Alyssa Vestich put herself back into her stricken lover's arms.

Love.

 _Love triggered evolution!_

When it was revealed that Alyssa Vestich had prematurely activated her higher level psionic functions, the entire staff of the Chronos Labs experienced a new elevation in our routine practices of caution.

I don't think that Alyssa Vestich realized it back then, but the entire staff of the Chronos Labs became subjects at her mercy. We didn't dare disturb that psionic beehive. We didn't dare upset Alyssa Vestich for fear of what she could potentially enact. Alyssa Vestich could have done practically anything to us then, she could have murdered us all in our sleep, or escaped the facilities with unquestionable ease.

But Alyssa Vestich didn't slaughter her subjugators. Alyssa Vestich didn't flee her prison. Alyssa Vestich didn't even try to perform one action or the other.

-But why not?

The answer to that question eluded me for so long. I initially believed that it was due to ignorance. Perhaps Alyssa Vestich didn't realize the extent of her capabilities. Or perhaps the premature genetic activation was only good for a single teleportation…

...Perhaps it was a combination of these two factors.

But Alyssa Vestich had her own reason for her passivity, and that reason soon became clear to me when I observed the developing relationship between two little girls. The reason for Alyssa's lack of initiative had been staring me in the face all along. That reason was a reflection of the same conscious desire that had triggered Alyssa Vestich's unforeseen evolution.

Love.

Alyssa Vestich and Alyssa Holtz were not merely close friends. They were far, far more intricately attached than just friends. The Alyssas were each other's lovers; lovers in the truest sense of the word.

Alyssa Vestich would not abandon her lover to save herself. Alyssa Vestich was so enamored by her love for Alyssa Holtz, that she _chose_ to stay within the fetters.

Alyssa Vestich chose to stay, just so that she could console her failing lover until Alyssa Holtz finally died.

I never expected Alyssa Holtz to survive the early alpha stage. I knew what liabilities her gene code's projection had listed. I had already written Alyssa Holtz up for dead well before the alpha stage's first phase had been seen to completion.

But Alyssa Holtz held on, all the way until early beta stage two.

Alyssa Holtz held on to her agonizing life, just to stay with the girl she loved.

Alyssa Holtz almost made it to the amniotic tanks. Alyssa Holtz almost numbered as the thirteenth.

But even the truest love could only suffer so much of cruel life, before that brief and miraculous candle finally flickered out its last.

That was the first time that Alyssa Vestich had ever attacked us.

...The only time that Alyssa Vestich had ever attacked us, was when we tried to remove the corpse of Alyssa Holtz from her arms.

The beta two stage had reversed the muscular dystrophy that had plagued the M2 specimens in the alpha stage. Alyssa Vestich wasn't only strong in her premature psionic capabilities. The ultimate life form that we designed needed to be strong in the flesh as well.

-And Alyssa Vestich was most certainly _strong_.

She nearly killed us all. Alyssa Vestich became a mythical Fury. I remember looking into her eyes, those wet and accusing eyes…

...And behind the hate, behind the grief, behind the anger, behind the hurt…

...There was still a little girl. A little girl looking for an answer to the same profane question that has haunted mankind since our species first learned of love…

 _Why? Why? Why…_

I could hear Alyssa's unspoken question. I could see the child in those eyes, begging for an answer. Begging for an answer to a question that no child should ever have to ask.

-Why must we lose the ones we love?

And a bitter old man…

...The same boogeyman who had robbed Alyssa of everything that she had ever known, or had ever hoped to have known…

...Her Devil, Doctor Fuji, told Alyssa why we lose the ones we love…

...And then Doctor Fuji killed Alyssa with those cursed words. I watched as the child in those eyes grew cold. I watched as the child in those eyes grew dark. I watched as the child in those eyes sank away beneath the heavy truth. And I watched as Alyssa Vestich died.

She was never the same after that terrible day. Alyssa no longer cared about us, herself, or anything else. She became hollow, broken, detached, dead…

The other eleven were nothing like her. Some struggled with us violently. Some never ceased to weep. And some of those poor souls had already lost every semblance of their former humanity.

They had all become monsters. Monsters of Rage. Monsters of Grief. Monsters of Madness.

And standing alone amongst them all, was Alyssa.

The Monster of Death.

I remember when we came for her at the beginning of beta stage three…

We had already suppressed and coerced the other eleven. Their dispositions and wild powers had warranted every adherence to the highest of precautions. We had exercised every circumspection imaginable when we transferred the other eleven into the Amniotic Lab. But Alyssa?

She was waiting for us in her dorm. She was just… standing there when we opened the door to her cell. Waiting for us with those hollow eyes. No one could breathe a word. No one could even move. She seemed so regal. She seemed so tragic. My Lost Goddess of Death, facing those who had come to take away the last of her humanity. And when our awe had stricken us all dumb within her presence, when our own minds struggled to conceive of her majesty, Alyssa stepped forward under her own volition, and those of us in attendance parted before her…

...And then Alyssa led _us_ to the Amniotic Labs. We followed _her_ into that field of fluid graves. And when we arrived at her tomb, Alyssa laid down within the last empty tank, before she curled up within that glass coffin as if she were about to go to sleep...

I couldn't watch. I couldn't watch them fill tank seven. I ran away. I fled the Chronos Labs altogether. And I kept running. I ran and I ran and I ran, until the ocean finally stopped me. Breathless, I fell onto the island's shore…

...And then a sobbing and embittered old man, looked up into the skies above, and begged to know:

 _-Why?_

Alyssa…

I'm sorry…

...I'm so…

 _...I'm so very sorry…_

 _ **-.-**_

He strode alone across the barren wastes. Slow and heavy were his steps, and as he walked, his serpentine flagella slithered across the dust behind him. Living chains dragged through the dirt behind this long lost and foreign analogue.

Home. He was home.

His home. The home that he had hated.

The home that he had destroyed.

Looking up at the blue skies, the ventricles on his face lengthened, revealing the eyes that hid behind his stiff and shiftless mask.

Was this really his home? The home that he had destroyed? The sky looked so different here. Blue. Why was it blue?

He stared up into that blue screen, the screen that concealed the stars beyond.

He liked this sky. This sky smothered those oppressive stars. This sky closed the vacuum of space.

Blue.

His vision shifted, and his gaze was lowered down, looking now to the flagella that had risen to meet his lost eyes. They were red, his flagella. Red. Why not make them blue?

And just as the sentiment was desired, so to did the shades shift upon his limbs, and the blue spilled forth from the roots in his chest and bled down into the flagella's red tips.

But then he remembered why he wore red.

A silent slump to his shoulders accompanied the transition, and the shades of his flagella shifted once more to that awful stain of red.

Red.

He looked into red dust before his narrow pseudopods, and softly shook his head.

Home.

He had destroyed his home.

He would destroy every home.

So he could never have a home.

A sudden trill interrupted his forlorn thoughts, and a blue bodied bird with white frilled wings flew overhead, singing its song of melodies to both the sky and the land. His ventricles sealed, closing those tired eyes, and he cast back his head to face the blue sky. He let it all wash over him, as he bathed in both the bird's hymn and the whispers in the wind. It almost sounded beautiful, this song. It almost felt pleasant just to hear it. And for just one short moment, his spirits were uplifted as this blue bird's beautiful music lessened the dead weight that he felt within the cold and dark of his core.

And then the music stopped. The ventricles of his face lengthened, and the eyes peered out into the sky. He loosened his flagella, and the blue bodied bird fell to the earth in pieces from the blood stained coils of his crushing grip.

Monsters couldn't make anything beautiful. Monsters couldn't shape music.

He staggered on without another thought, his gaze preying north as his eyes focused on the horizon. Dragging his flagella across the earth, he carried ever on, carving a serpentine trail of wet glistening red through the footprints that he had left behind.

 _ **-.-**_

Water. It had been such a long time since he'd last seen water. It had been such a long time since had he heard the rolling crash.

An ocean. This home had oceans too.

He had missed the oceans. He had missed their music. As his stumbling steps halted before the crest of land and sea, he lowered himself down onto the wet and cold sand, and welcomed the ocean's embrace as the waves fell over him. The water was pleasantly chilled and soft to the touch. The heavy waves drove him down into the scraping sand, before the mighty ocean lifted him from the grits and dragged him further out. He could taste salt across every inch of his surface. He could taste the ocean through his skin. But salt was not all that he could taste in this water. He could taste something more than just simple salt in this new ocean.

He could taste life.

Rising from the surf, he walked further down the shore. The waves would not touch him, no matter how deep he placed himself beneath their rising shadows. He wouldn't let the waves touch him. He didn't want to feel the ocean anymore.

And here it was. Frolicking in the briny mud.

Life.

More birds. More blue birds. But not the birds that flew and sang. These were birds that swam and warbled. These were birds that could barely walk on dry land. They looked up from their play when one bird warbled his coming, and at his dreadful approach, they all fled before him. Flailing over one another in their desperation to escape him.

They still remembered him. They still remember how he had killed so many of them. Their genetic code had recorded his many shapes. Their genetic code had stored his shifting colors. Their genetic code had equipped them with the means to detect his presence. Immeasurable generations had separated him from them, but they still recognized his form.

The monsters knew who he was.

The monsters still remembered.

The Savior of Destruction, who had been lost for countless generations. He had come back to them. He had come back to kill them all.

The water was stained red when his heavy steps violated their empty footprints. There were no more desperate squawks and warbles. There were no more terrified monsters. There was only the elapsing sound of the sea crashing down around him, and the coarse wet sand that grinded softly beneath his slow and heavy steps.

He left the ocean after that. He no longer wanted it. He was in a green place now, and the sky above was gray and dark. He started walking again, facing west this time. The green was familiar to him. It murmured against his legs, and rasped against his flagella. He could feel the sharp edges of the green all around him, and he could taste the life flowing from within them. But they did not harm him. They were not numbered among the monsters. They were not counted among the creators. He had no need to hate the green. And then the sky rumbled, and the first droplets of water began to fall. This too, was something familiar. This he knew even better than the ocean or the green. This he knew as the rain.

He hated the rain.

It made him think of her. It made him remember all of the rain that had fallen from her eyes. All the rain that he had brought to those sweet and loving eyes.

Rocks stood before him now, stacked high in a straightened row. To the north stretched on that line of rocks, and to the south was piled even further more. He knew what this was. He knew what this meant. This was a wall.

And only the creators could build walls such as these.

The stones before him disappeared without a sound or a signature that denoted their displacement from existence. He stepped through the gap in those walls, and now he came to stand within the creators' forbidden lands.

He knew that the creators didn't want him in their lands. The creators had outlawed him from ever entering their lands. But he didn't answer to creators anymore. He had silenced all the creators so long ago. And yet here they still were.

They were not the creators that he remembered. But that shape was most certainly the creator's shape. They had been shaped as such, so that they could give form. And the creators had shaped him in the way that he was, so that he could destroy all of their forms.

They did not know him, these creators. They did not recognize his intentions. The creators tensed when he approached them and the creators reached for the shaped spheres clasped upon their shaped belts, their expressions hardening into the creators' signature portrait of violence. These creators were no different from his old creators. These new creators too, only created to destroy. And now these new creators raised their arms against him, and bellowed forth their cries for war. But he did not want to fight these new creators.

He just wanted them to die.

And so now he walked through the new creators' blood, and dragged a fresh shade of red across his long and weary trail.

 _ **-.-**_

 _ **(-)**_

 _ **-.-**_

She placed the last stone upon the pile, and then paused to look down at what she had wrought.

It was just a pile of rocks, neatly stacked in a short and narrow row.

There was nothing beneath the pile of rocks. Nothing but dirt and more rocks. And beneath those dirt and rocks?

There was still only more dirt and rocks.

She could feel it gathering in her eyes. She could feel it closing in her throat.

It was just a pile of rocks. There was nothing beneath those rocks.

There was nothing underneath those rocks, because there was nothing left to bury.

' _...Remember…'_

She closed her eyes against the tears. She did remember. She would always remember. It was the one thing that they couldn't take from her. It was the only thing that she had left.

And she would never, ever, bury _her_ memory.

' _...You deserve to be forever…'_

But _she_ was forever. _She_ was forever lost. _She_ was forever dead. And now she was to be forever alone…

She smashed the rocks, and scattered the pile.

This was to be a memory. A memory of the girl she loved. But there was nothing here to remember. Nothing left of the girl that she loved.

' _...Alyssa…'_

Her breath was tearing at the bind in her throat. She couldn't breath. She couldn't see. She couldn't stop shaking. She couldn't stay kneeling.

Falling down amongst the scattered stones, she laid down within _her_ grave, and bitterly wept until the dreams came to close and dry her wet and lost eyes.

 _ **-.-**_

It was midnight when Alyssa rose from the dreams. It took a moment for her to realize that this wasn't some twisted delusion. This wasn't some living lie.

She wasn't in Fuji's graveyard. She wasn't a slave to the Doctor's vision anymore.

She was in a cemetery. One left unused for countless years. The lights of Saffron City blotted out the horizon, and the trees of the Gouge rustled softly in the warm Kanto breeze.

' _...I'm sorry, Alyssa. I tried to bring you back home…'_ Alyssa rose from the empty grave, and wiped the fresh tears from her eyes.

Home. Those bright city lights were their home.

Home for Alyssa. Home for the other Alyssa.

Those warm and inviting lights were their home.

Alyssa took a hesitant step forward, and followed it with another.

Home.

Mother. Father.

Home.

And then Alyssa remembered. And then Alyssa raised her six fingers before her desperate eyes.

' _...Monsters don't have homes. Monsters don't have parents. Monsters don't have love. And without you, Alyssa… I'm just an ugly monster...'_ Alyssa's eyes clenched shut, before she turned back upon those Saffron lights, and staggered further out into the forests of the Gouge.

 _ **-.-**_

 _ **(-)**_

 _ **-.-**_

He stayed low with in the grass, and ignored the tickling green blades as they brushed against the rim of his vacuoles. He was watching them. He had been watching them now for quite some time now. They didn't notice the red figure hiding himself in the green, watching them as they played.

It was a monster and a creator.

A young monster and young creator.

And they were playing.

Playing with one another.

He had never seen this before. He had never seen a monster and a creator laughing with each other. The young creator was throwing a shaped sphere with a gasp of laughter, and the young purple and white furred quadruped was eagerly chasing it. He knew this monster. He had killed vermin like this before. He had once filled oceans with their blood, and raised continents out of their corpses. These were weak and common monsters. Monsters weak enough for even a child creator to kill.

Yet here they were. Meeting not as enemies like they should, but rather as companions.

He could feel the creator's love for this monster. And he could feel the creator's love reflected in the monster. He had never encountered a monster that could love before.

Was this even possible? Could a creator and a monster share love?

He knew what love was. He knew what it was better than anyone else, or so he thought. But here, he witnessed a new form of love. And this love confused him.

This love wasn't right. This love wasn't possible.

And that with that dismissive thought, the creator's joyful laughter ceased, and the monster's rasping breath faded.

And then they both fell to ground, dead before his feet.

A dead monster. And a dead creator.

They were still smiling, even though the glaze was rising to coat their eyes. As the muscles grew slack, their expressions began to sag, until their looks of joy melted away.

And all that was left to be seen was death.

Now they looked right. Now they looked possible.

Dead was how they should have been.

He would let them have each other in death, just as they had once had each other in life.

Dead or alive, they only knew of war-

He suddenly froze stiff in his own cold thoughts.

-War?

The child creator knew nothing of war.

And the child monster only knew of a war to protect.

The monster only fought war to protect his creator.

The child monster only destroyed to protect the creator he loved-

-Love?

Something twisted within him when he looked down at the two dead figures before his feet.

Something conflicted within him, fighting to be heard.

This monster knew of the creator's love.

And now he didn't know what to do.

The ventricles sealed upon his mask, hiding his eyes from the hateful stars.

Why?

Why had he killed them?

Was it truly so wrong, for a monster and a creator to share love?

He didn't know.

But he wanted to know.

The ruptured tissues within their dead brains began to mend, and he rekindled the sparks that fed the beating of their hearts. It was not too late for them yet. What he had taken from them, he could still return.

 _ **-.-**_

A sudden jolt jarred the boy and his Rattata, and they both woke gasping for their breaths. Panic clenched the muscles in their chests, while the dread of some horrible dream still gnawed at their conscious minds.

"...Skittles? Are you okay?" The boy reached for his quivering Rattata, whose eyes were wide and terrified, its gaze locked upon the tall grass not far from where they lay.

"Skittles, what happened?" The boy touched his Rattata's shoulder, and the rodent jumped in shock. Following his Pokemon's horrified line of sight, the boy saw a pair of lost eyes staring at them from the grass.

And then those lost eyes blinked.

-Sideways.

"Skittles!" The boy grabbed his Rattata, and then leapt to his feet. Cradling his purple rodent, the boy tore off down the road, screaming in terror as though some alien monster was chasing them.

But Deoxys wasn't chasing the boy and the Rattata. Deoxys was sitting down upon his stunned pseudopods, and following the boy's flight with his widened eyes.

The creator had saved the monster?

What anomaly was this?!

Deoxys's mind exploded with questions, questions that he couldn't even hope to answer. And then Deoxys shook himself free of those questions, and rose to his weary feet. Dragging his flagella behind him, the foreign analogue carried on with his long path.

But there wasn't any red stains in the footprints that he left behind. And when next he felt both the creators' love and presence amongst the monsters…

...Deoxys just turned from his path, and walked the other way.

 **...**

 _ **-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**_

 **...**

 _Red is the color of blood and war. Red is the color of Mars, the God of War. Red is both the color of violence and of death.  
_

 _-So why is red also the color of love?_


	7. Chapter VII: And Rhea Screamed

.

 _ **-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**_

 **The Saga of Kings:**

 **-.-.-.-**

" _ **Intersecting Parallels"**_

 **-v-**

 **.**

 _ **Written by:**_

Vile M.F. Slanders

 **.**

 _ **-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**_

 **Chapter VII: And Rhea Screamed**

They created me to kill in reflex.

-That was their first mistake.

They created me so that I could never truly die.

-That was their second mistake.

They created me in such a way that if I was to fall, then the one who had killed me would become me, and then my killer's weapons would become my own.

-That was their third mistake.

Then they sent me to war against their enemies, and instructed me to destroy all that would oppose me.

-That was their fourth mistake.

And in the sparse times when the war grew faint, in those briefest of moments when the Brink digested all its dead children so that it could birth a new army of monsters, my creators pushed me away from themselves in loathing and revulsion.

-But it was already too late.

I was not created by altering a pre-existing template. I was not designed according to surviving the natural order's most extreme. I was engineered in a new template, fashioned in an environment that only the creators could shape.

That was the simple me. The little me. The smallest of all my forms.

That was the "Viral" me.

They made this virus every bit as robust as their artificial compositions could endow. Then they subjected this single unconscious line of code, this simplistic silane construct of unnatural constitution, to the utmost hideous and abnormal forms of stimuli.

I'm grateful that my recollections pertaining to that period of my early existence have been limited in accordance with the most basic archival structures of inherent memory, else my psyche would have been irreparably compromised by the creators' vile machinations.

I wasn't capable of rational thought until the creators fed one of their own gestating children to the Viral me.

Oh yes, I had a mother. I may have been conceived in the artificial nightmares of the creators' desperate genius, but I was born to a mother just as you were.

And perhaps, similar to your own mother, my mother had a name all picked out for me, well before I was even born.

"Deoxys."

I know that my mother never chose to nurture me. I know that her own people had twisted her and sacrificed so many others like her, just so that they could engineer the perfect mother for their ultimate life form.

My mother was only half a creator when they had finally finished torturing her.

My mother's other half though…

...Well...

...That other half was me.

We were connected, from the very moment of my birth. My mother was to serve as my link to the creators, and to relay unto me all that they commanded of us. The ultimate life form and his perfect mother, both enslaved to the creators' cruel designs.

The creators never gave her a choice. They never asked her if she wanted to become the perfect mother. They just forced me upon her, and left her to wither as I consumed her living flesh.

But even after the injustice, even after all the rape…

...My mother still found the heart required to love her poisonous child.

The creators kept us together on the outskirts of their civilization. Just a dying perfect mother, and her alien ultimate son. Prisoners of the creators' shame and hope, sequestered far from where any of their queasy eyes could see.

But I didn't hate the creators. I didn't know what hate was back then.

And I didn't love my mother, because I didn't know what love was either.

That was the bigger me. The standard me. The normal me.

That was the "Progeny" me.

I never understood why my mother wept whenever they took me away from her. I never understood why she wanted to hold me. I never understood why she kissed me upon my head.

I didn't understand any of it, not even when the creators changed me again to fight their war.

I became the powerful me. The weapon me. The killer me.

That was the "Savior" me.

I died more times than even genetic memory can record. I was reduced to that basic, Viral me at my every death. I infected the monsters who slew me with my simple form, and then the monsters who slew me would die and birth the Progeny me. And when the Progeny me took up the dead monster's own arms, and used the monster's own devices to slay their kin, I became the Savior me again.

And the cycle went on, and on, and on, until the ultimate life form had slain every monster that the Brink could ever birth.

But then the Brink would birth new children, monsters wielding new weapons to oppose me.

And so the war would begin again, an immortal analogue fighting forevermore against the endless spawn of the Brink.

The Brink could only design its weapons by its own immutable codes of nature, which was why I had been born in violation of those intrinsic laws. Every single evolutionary weapon that the monsters could design would be replicated by the Viral me, further refined by Progeny me, and finally wielded by the Savior me.

But the Viral me didn't only replicate the weapons of the monsters. The Viral me could also replicate the abstract programs that whispered within the monsters' social mentality.

And through the basic behavioral genetic coding of the monsters, I began to discover a new me.

The confused me. The uncertain me. The questioning me.

That was the "Child" me.

And the Child me could just begin to understand.

When my mother wept for the stolen me, I was compelled to return to her side.

When my mother held me close to her, I in turn held my mother close to me.

And when my mother kissed me upon my brow…

...I learned how to weep for my inability to return her tender anatomical expression.

The creators were not satisfied with my development. I was made to be subservient, devoid of emotions or aesthetic thoughts. But I was beginning to discover them, these emotions and these aesthetic thoughts. And when the Child me began to ask the creators: "Why?"

-The creators began to fear me.

And so they tried to kill her. They tried to kill my mother. They held her responsible for my enlightenment, and so they decided to punish her for it. But they had already taken everything that my mother had ever known away from her, and then they had left her with only a cancerous son. A terminal child that she still managed to love. So to punish my mother, the creators decided to take away the only thing that she had left.

And when the creators tried to kill my mother?

-That was their _last_ mistake.

 _ **-.-**_

 _ **-Personal Log of Doctor Fuji, Supplemental**_

 _ **Date: August 18th, 1523 post-Brink**_

 _ **Location: Indigo Confederacy, Kanto; Saffron City. Indigo's Department of Global Polarity Surveillance.**_

 _ **Subject: A Lead**_

We've have been monitoring the earth's own magnetic field for anomalies that might hint at a massive EM emission. Powerful enough electromagnetic fluctuations can generate a "ripple effect" across the entire geomagnetic field. Following these ripples back to their epicenter can provide us with the general location of Alyssa. While this is far from an accurate method of tracking, we've already begun to detect minor anomalies whose occurrences consistently defy a satisfactory scientific explanation. Leaving us to assume that our Alyssa is the cause for all these inexplicably and repetitively localized EM ripples.

Hoenn. All of these anomalies are transpiring within the province of Hoenn.

We've yet to establish a motive behind Alyssa's presence in the Hoenn region, but these EM anomalies are supported by other forms of evidence which synergizes and correlates with our speculation of an immensely powerful psionic entity that is assiduously hunting within the Hoenn region.

-Though I believe that the gerund "hunting" should be substituted with the far more accurate term "massacring."

It seems that the feral Pokemon of Hoenn are currently under attack by some monumental force. The Hoenn Ranger Corps have reported that there are massive areas of the Hoenn Frontier which are actively being wiped clean of any and all indigenous species of Pokemon. Though again, considering the colloquial terminology that the Rangers' favor, "wiped clean" does not necessarily imply a state of cleanliness.

In regards to this case, "wiped clean" implies a swath of gruesome deaths staining entire sectors of the Hoenn Frontier red with gore. Even more disturbing than the priorly mentioned eviscerations is the unparalleled efficiency of this ghastly phenomenon. The affected areas are literally "wiped clean" of all Pokemon life. Not a single organism is spared, not even the Pokemon's developing offspring.

The Hoenn Ranger's estimated fatality statistics are mystifying. If this rate of environmentally selective mortality continues to be sustained, then the entire Para-Kingdom of Hoenn could be faced with extinction in only a matter of years.

It's almost as if humanity's fondest dream of freedom is being delivered unto us by a vengeful God…

And while my ACE prescribed colleagues are quick to attribute this phenomenon to the Mew-2 prototype, several overlooked inconsistencies have left me skeptical.

The affected areas are perfectly linear across their entire expanse. There are no deviations from a straight line. A literal road of death connects the point of initiation with the point of conclusion. While this peculiar trait has not gone unnoticed, the reasoning behind it most certainly hasn't been explored. To elaborate further on this oddity, certain grim signatures are left behind in the visceral remains that overlap the central axis of these "death roads." These visual signatures bear a distinct physical resemblance to a snake's lateral undulations, though it should also be noted that these tracks only ever occur within the proximity of significant sources of blood.

Furthermore, some of the more intact carcasses recovered by the Ranger Corps carry all the hallmarks of death via constriction. Further analyses conducted by the Ranger's capable medical staff provides even more startling information pertaining to the recorded lacerations afflicting some of the less then well preserved carcasses.

The heavily bruised lacerations display tissue partings that are reminiscent of; and here I quote the Ranger's medical staff:

" _...The unusual tissue partings are reminiscent of the deep lashes more commonly inflicted by a whip..."_

If anyone should recognize the appearance of a Pokemon's hide after a thorough scourging, then the irrefutable claim of expertise clearly belongs to the medical division of the Ranger Corps. The Ranger's servicemon training methods are an unforgivable affront to any and all who practice even an iota of ethical treatment during the domestication of Pokemon.

And finally, there is one more detail. A detail pertaining to a personal observation that I made in regards to Alyssa's passive behavior.

Beyond the acceptable outburst that transpired after the death of M2-S247, Alyssa Vestich had never once expressed an inclination for violence. Not even the cataclysmic event that razed Chronos Island into the depths of the sea should be considered a conscious action of Alyssa. That was a reflexive response to hazardous stimuli that we programmed into her cognitive structure. Both the febrile seizure and the lumbar sedation induced by the neural inhibitor harness input can be held accountable for Alyssa's reaction. It's quite likely that Alyssa was sound asleep throughout the obliteration of Chronos Island.

Alyssa would never harm a fly. I'm sure of this. And unless her psyche was adversely affected by beta stage three, there is absolutely no reason to suspect Alyssa's involvement in the mindless slaughter of Hoenn's indigenous Pokemon.

 _ **-.-**_

Alyssa cracked open her bleary eyes. Pushing herself up off the grass, the exhausted creature staggered on towards uncertainty.

Alyssa covered all of four paces before she collapsed again.

She couldn't sleep. She didn't want to sleep. She was terrified of sleep.

If Alyssa closed her eyes, then the Red would find her.

Images. Memories. Screams. Pain. Death. Red.

These were not Alyssa's memories. These were not even coherent recollections. This was some kind of warning. Some manner of instinctive terror had been activated.

Red. Snakes for arms. Red. A mask with only eyes. Red. A violet gem at its core. Red.

Destruction.

She could feel it changing all around her. A new primordial awareness had been awoken. A monster's senses now alerted Alyssa to some grave danger.

The world was changing all around her. The Brink was calling all of its children to war.

' _No…'_ Alyssa began to tremble as the visions besieged her waking mind. Visions of countless deaths. Monsters of every shape and size. And through the last visions of their terrified eyes, Alyssa witnessed him.

Red.

He met everyone of their dying eyes. Fixed them all with his cold and unimpassioned glare.

The one who had sealed the Brink.

The one who had destroyed a home.

Red.

Disease.

Red.

Death.

Red.

Destruction.

Alyssa's quivering eyes slammed shut. But the Red still looked into her. He could look into every monster. He could see them all through the dying's eyes. He could see Alyssa begging to die. He could hear her screaming for an end.

And he didn't care.

He didn't care about ends.

He didn't care about death.

...Because he still sought his own end, even though he couldn't die.

A cold grip seized within Alyssa's throbbing chest. The monster's sense was entangled with the child's eyes. The senses of a monster fed the senses of a human, and from those sentient eyes, Alyssa could see what no monster saw. She could see into him. Just like he could see into her. And now she could see the small red boy. The small red boy who still wept.

...Wept for a love that he had long since lost.

' _...Who are you?'_ Alyssa asked. The Red pulled back in shock. He wasn't expecting to find a monster with a voice. He wasn't expecting to hear a child ask for his name.

Those strange eyes looked into Alyssa, and they widened with fear. The Red fell away from her, and then he tried to disappear. But Alyssa followed him into the dream. She followed the sobbing sounds of that weeping red boy.

' _Stop! Come back!'_ Alyssa begged, as the Red neared his escape. He froze right before the precipice, stood before the gate that could free him from this rapport with her.

The red boy turned to Alyssa, and his wet eyes looked up at her. He was just a child, gazing up at the monster who had asked him for his name.

' _Who are you?'_ Alyssa whispered. The red boy shuddered, and the entire rapport trembled with his quivering form.

' _...I was you.'_

Then the red boy disappeared, and Alyssa opened her dreaming eyes.

' _W-what…? What did he mean?'_ Alyssa sobbed into the grass, weeping both in fear and in some other nameless and profane sensation. And when her tears had bled the last of her strength, Alyssa slipped into a deep and troubled sleep.

 _ **-.-**_

 _ **(-)**_

 _ **-.-**_

Monsters that knew of love. Monsters that spoke with a voice. Monster who had not been born as monsters. This world made no sense.

Deoxys opened his eyes, and drew his red flagella up before his gaze.

The creators. Why did they always create ruin?

Why did they always destroy what they loved?

Deoxys shook himself free of the old questions. It did not matter. What he had just discovered was both a monster and a creator. Both an unmaker and a shaper. Both were creatures that he despised.

' _Alyssa…'_ He murmured her name in his unspoken tongue, and tasted of the stolen thoughts that had shaped her.

The parallels between them were hauntingly similar.

Yet after further reflection, her tragedy seemed more akin to that of his mother's…

Deoxys shut the dreaded stream of memories out. He didn't want to see his mother's life again. He didn't want to see his mother's suffering all over again.

He didn't want to see her die again.

' _...Why?'_ Deoxys asked of the sky. He didn't even know why he still asked.

' _...Why did she have to die?'_ His ventricles sealed, and the blue sky was obliterated by the cold, dark, and heavy.

"Why."

It did not matter "why."

It had never mattered "why."

What was "why" had been done, and now that "why" could never be undone.

But Alyssa…

...He could still prevent that "why" from reoccurring.

Deoxys knew that he could save Alyssa before she became him.

 _ **-.-**_

Deoxys returned to the ocean's shore again, washing the red from his stained form. The monsters were plentiful here. The monsters had evolved into a plague upon this world. But their disease was of no contest to the disease harbored by this foreign analogue.

He had been created with a purpose to destroy.

And even if it broke his mother's loving heart…

...Deoxys would see that purpose fulfilled.

He still didn't understand. He couldn't understand.

How could his mother forgive them? How could she have loved both the creators and the monsters?

-How could his mother ever have loved him?

Love. Love was loss. Love was pain.

Is that why she had wept for them? Because she was lost to her own people? Was mother's love all just pain as well?

But her love wasn't always pain. In those briefest of moments when he was the Child to his mother…

...He could remember a love that was sweeter than only pain.

' _Mother… Why did you want me to kill you?'_ Deoxys shuddered as he raised his head from the red surf. Looking up into that beautiful blue sky, Deoxys could feel the rain pooling in his eyes.

She would have liked this sky too…

...She had always liked the color blue...

That was when Deoxys felt them coming. And then the foreign analogue sealed his wet eyes.

They just couldn't leave well enough alone.

 _ **-.-**_

"Whitetail six, this is Whitetail nine. We have a confirmed contact. I repeat, we have a confirmed contact. We're two kilometers west of Rustboro's sector Delta, currently heading north along the coast. We're five klicks south of sector Foxtrot's border. Requesting immediate deployment of the Acquisition Units. I say again, confirmed contact, send in the nets! Over!" Agent Surry radioed in to Central Command, just as the distant figure disappeared beneath the ocean's surface again. He could barely make out its shape, but the EM telemetry readings didn't lie.

-That was M2-S314. Nothing designed by nature could emit those massive EM signatures in idle wavelengths.

"Copy that, Whitetail nine! Acquisition has been scrambled! Maintain pursuit-"

-A blare of static cut Central Command's transmission short. With a suddenness that dazed the perception, Agent Surry was no longer flying on the back of his Striker Class Skarmory.

Agent Surry was frozen in an expanse of sheer blinding white light, floating in an unseen, yet perceivable ether. The intense light was burning his eyes and inducing an aching pain in the rear lobes of his brain. But even so, his eyes could not shut, nor could he defy the harsh ringing that reverberated throughout his entire body.

 _It_ was standing in front of him, mercifully casting its shadow over him as _It_ took its place in between Agent Surry's eyes and the brilliant white light.

Agent Surry could see _It_ now.

- _It_ wasn't M2-S314.

 _It_ was something _else._

"-What are you?!" Agent Surry gasped.

The red figure did not answer him. _It_ instead moved closer to the man who was incapable of fleeing _It_. When _It_ came to stand before _Its_ prisoner, two strange eyes filled the widening slits of _Its_ featureless gray mask, and a peculiar gaze met Agent Surry's frightened eyes.

-And then Agent Surry's entire body began to _itch._

' _How much pain can your species endure while still retaining your self awareness?'_ It was not a voice that asked Agent Surry such an ominous question. This question was asked in a series of subconscious sensations triggered within his own psyche. This red figure was manipulating the nerves of Agent Surry's brain in order to make itself understood.

"-Pain?" A terrified mortal voice asked.

' _I'm only curious…'_ The cognitive sensations apologetically explained to Agent Surry.

-And then that prevalent bodily itch spontaneously transitioned into a mind-altering _burn._

' _...No where near as much pain as I had originally been expecting. Such a delicate species. How interesting.'_ The red figure mused while Agent Surry screamed.

 _ **-.-**_

Deoxys returned to the physical realm alone. He left the drooling creator behind in that collapsing pocket dimension of light. Many of Deoxys's questions had been answered, yet even more had arisen to take their place. Familiar questions for Deoxys. Questions he had asked so long ago.

Questions that troubled the foreign analogue.

But Deoxys had little time for pondering these question and their uncomfortable answers.

The creators were waiting for him.

-Or rather, the creators were waiting for someone like him.

The creators had been waiting for _her_ to answer their call of war.

' _...And so, the cycle repeats itself…'_ The foreign analogue sighed.

He was not the one that these creators had been expecting.

These creators had come before him bearing their war for _Alyssa_.

 _ **-.-**_

Their EM telemetry equipment was wiped out. Every electronic device had simply died when _It_ crawled out of the rift. The Acquisition Unit had only just begun their live feed of the event when the initial EMP destroyed their cameras.

They had been expecting a tactical maneuver like this. _It_ was attempting to strip them of their weaponry. The neural inhibitor harness was designed to contain such EM emissions. They need not fear for their Trump Card's functionality. Though now the Acquisition Unit realized that the harness's anatomical dimensions had rendered their Trump Card obsolete. The neural inhibitor harness had been tailored solely for containing M2-S314's biological proportions.

 _It_ wasn't M2-S314.

But _It_ was answering their call to war.

Deprived of their weapons, and relieved of their net, ACE's acquisition unit was rendered practically helpless. But even _It_ could not interfere with the Brink-derived matter compression and dematerialization technologies that had imbued their pokeballs with a purpose.

An small army of Interloper Class servicemon entered the field, and ACE's Militarized Dark-Types prepped for a skirmish.

ACE had hoped that their Interlopers could withstand telepathic subjugation due to the Dark-Type's half Distortion addled minds. ACE had faith in the Interlopers' innate ability to generate gravitational fluctuations that could protect themselves from a psion's EM emissions.

But all of ACE's hopes, and all of ACE's faith…

...Served only as the epitaph for ACE's desperation.

 _It_ wasn't M2-S314.

 _It_ wasn't the Mew-2 prototype.

 _It_ was something far worse.

' _...Why, oh why… Can you only ever create war?'_

 _It_ spoke to them all, creator and monster alike. And when the monsters witnessed _Its_ form looking down at them from above…

...All of ACE's hopes and faith were reduced to cowering beasts.

Even the Interlopers knew what _It_ was.

The Savior of Destruction.

The Killer of the Brink.

The End of all Endings.

 _-Deoxys._

 _ **-.-**_

He had been willing to give them a chance, these creators. He had believed that these creators were different from his own creators. He had dared to hope that these creators could learn to live without war. He had even been willing to destroy their enemies just so that they could experience brief life without war.

-Hope.

Why had he still hoped?

These creators were no different from the monsters. The monsters destroyed to sustain their simple lives. And the creators destroyed to raise their complex shapes. There was no difference in their means, and their ends seemed evermore the reflection as well.

These new creators were no different from his old creators.

These new creators were just monsters as well.

He spared them no mercy. He showed them no kindness. Death was their only release from his bitter and terrible means.

But even with the bitterness, even with the dead hope, Deoxys still desired to know…

...He still wanted to know why they created war, when such conflict became impractical for their survival.

These creators, who professed to know of love.

-Why did they create war in their hatred and their fear?

He did not hear their screams. He did not heed their pleas. As they had taken from him, so now did he take from them. The creators had forced him into this war.

And so Deoxys would force the creators to answer:

"Why?"

He didn't even know why he asked. There was no answer to "why."

"Why" had been asked before, and "why" had never once been answered.

Why would "why" be answered now?

' _...Why?'_ Deoxys begged, burying his flagella into a creator's screaming mouth.

' _-Why?'_ Deoxys pleaded as his flagella breached the flesh of the throat, and burrowed through the bone of the creator's skull.

' _...Tell me why.'_ Deoxys whispered as his flagella coiled around the brain, and linked his nerves to the creator's own. Invoking both the electrical and chemical charges that stimulated memory and rational deduction, Deoxys fed his question into the creator's cerebral tissues, and searched the living membranes for "why."

' _...You don't know why, do you?'_ Deoxys sighed when he looked into the dying creator's eyes. With a flick of his thoughts, Deoxys released the creator from his life of unquestioned unknowns, and a fresh coat of glistening red rained down to stain his awful form.

' _...You.'_ Deoxys turned to the next terrified creator whom he had taken as his prisoner.

' _...Do you know why?'_ Deoxys begged, sinking his flagella into the creator's quivering eyes.

But this creator didn't know "why" either. And none of the creators that Deoxys asked knew "why."

They were no different from his creators.

They had never even tried to answer "why."

They had pondered it, perhaps.

But they had never found the answer for "why."

And so Deoxys's "why" was to remain unanswered.

 _ **-.-**_

Deoxys looked around himself, and shook his disappointed head at the field of red sands and the sea of ruddy water.

No one knew "why."

No one had ever known "why."

No one knew "why," except for mother…

And he had killed her when she asked him to learn "why."

' _...I'm sorry, mother… I wanted to save you… I wanted to be with you forever… But I'm… I can't… I'm just…'_

He was just a monster. The purest and truest definition of monster.

 _-Deoxys._

The Savior of Destruction.

' _...I couldn't save you mother… I wasn't created to save. I was created to destroy. But her? This Alyssa? She's still not me yet. I know that I can save her. I know that I can destroy her. I will be Alyssa's Savior of Destruction. And then I will kill the Brink again, before I will hunt down the Brink's child, and I will destroy that legacy no matter where the Brink tries to hide it. I'm sorry, mother. I cannot create… I'm sorry…'_

Deoxys sealed his ventricles, and withdrew into the entangled rift, before he cut his way through space and time, and exited the rift if only to enter a different part of this world.

Kanto, as the creators had called it.

Saffron, as the creators had named it.

 _Lies,_ as Deoxys knew it.

 _Home_ , as Alyssa knew it.

 **...**

 _ **-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**_

 _ **Define "God":**_ _That's a tricky one. But I think that atomizing an island large enough to sustain human life, by twitching in your sleep, should be considered a prerequisite of anything that claims to be a "God."_

 _...Who's with me on this one?_


	8. Chapter VIII: When Persephone Slept

.

 _ **-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**_

 **The Saga of Kings:**

 **-.-.-.-**

" _ **Intersecting Parallels"**_

 **-v-**

 **.**

 _ **Written by:**_

Vile M.F. Slanders

 **.**

 _ **-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**_

 **Chapter VIII: When Persephone Slept**

' _Do try to restrain yourself.'_

"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT!?"

"-ERIC!"

' _Listen to the pleas of your mate, Eric. There is little reason for these futile heroics.'_

"...Let… Her… Go."

' _Will you cease this ridiculous conflict?'_

"-Don't kill him! Please don't kill him!"

' _Stop struggling, Eric. You'll only make your mate even more upset.'_

"...I… said-!"

"ERIC!"

' _-And I said no.'_

"Oh my God… Oh my God… _Eric-_?"

' _He is still alive. You need not weep for him yet.'_

"Oh my God… What did you do to him?!"

' _Are you requesting a repetition of the process for yourself?'_

"-What are you?!"

' _Inconsequential, as far as your future is concerned.'_

"...What do you want from us?"

' _...You? I don't want anything from you. I'm not interested in you.'_

"...Then why are you doing this?"

' _For your daughter.'_

"My daughter-? MY DAUGHTER IS DEAD, YOU FREAK! WHY WOULD YOU TORTURE US FOR ALYSSA!?"

' _...Is your daughter really dead to you?'_

"...What is that supposed to mean?"

' _...'_

"...You know something about Alyssa…"

' _...'_

"-WHERE THE HELL IS MY DAUGHTER?!"

' _...She's coming.'_

"...Alyssa… Alyssa is alive-?"

' _-Oh yes. Very much alive. And I would imagine, very, very angry with me…'_

"...Is that why you're hurting us-?"

' _My apologies. But it seems that your daughter requires some manner of incentive for her return home.'_

"...Return-? Alyssa is coming home?!"

' _...'_

"...Why are you looking at me like that?"

' _...Upon learning of your daughter's return, you seemed happy…'_

"...Happy-? I don't know what kind of fucked up planet you fell off of, but when you're talking to me about my daughter, pretend that we're on earth-"

' _-Yes. I am aware of my present cosmological coordinates, as well as the title that your species bestowed upon this planet. Earth. Specify relevance?'_

"...You're not from earth?!"

' _Inconsequential. Daughter. Specify your daughter's relevance.'_

"..."

' _...I'm waiting.'_

"...She's my daughter. What greater relevance is there?"

' _Explain.'_

"...What do you mean, ' _Explain?'_ Alyssa. Is. My. DAUGHTER!"

' _...I'm growing weary of these irrational outbursts…'_

"-Irrational?! I love my daughter, you freak! I love my Alyssa! And you have the gall to call my maternal love irrational?!"

' _...Do you truly love Alyssa?'_

"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?! OF COURSE I LOVE ALYSSA!"

' _...Would you still love Alyssa if she wasn't your daughter anymore?'_

"WHAT-?"

' _...'_

"...What is that supposed to mean?"

' _Allow me to rephrase: Would you still love Alyssa, even if she were to become a monster?'_

"...I don't know what kind of a freak-"

' _-Answer the question.'_

"Yes, I'd still love Alyssa!"

' _Even if she was-'_

"-YES, I'D LOVE MY DAUGHTER, EVEN IF SHE WAS A MONSTER! WHAT KIND OF SICK QUESTION IS THAT?!"

' _...I almost believe that you would still love her…'_

"...What are you getting at-?"

' _...'_

"Did something happen to Alyssa?!"

' _You'll see. Soon enough. And so will I…'_

"See?! See what? What will I see?!"

' _...'_

"-Answer me!"

' _No.'_

"...Then what will you see?"

' _...I will see if you will still weep for your daughter, or if you will instead spit upon her corpse, after I have killed your Alyssa.'_

"-DON'T YOU DARE HURT MY DAUGHTER-!?"

' _...'_

"...What's going on?"

' _Impressive. I didn't think that Alyssa would have access to that caliber of focus yet…'_

"...Why is it getting dark?"

' _...Hush, now. You can feel that, can't you?'_

"...It's getting so cold… The air feels so… heavy…"

' _Dry your eyes. And wake your mate. Your daughter has come home.'_

"...Come home-?"

' _-GET AWAY FROM MY PARENTS!'_

"...Alyssa-?!"

' _Greetings, Alyssa. I've been longing to meet you.'_

' _I said… Get away from my parents…'_

"-Oh my God…"

' _Look, Alyssa. Look. Your mother is about to answer both of our questions…'_

"...Alyssa?"

' _...Just leave them alone… Please...'_

' _Come now, Alyssa. Let's not be rude. Your mother has been eagerly awaiting your return…'_

"-Oh my God."

' _...M-mom-? ...I'm… I'm sorry…'_

"...Oh my God..."

 _ **-.-**_

 _ **-Personal Log of Doctor Fuji, Supplemental**_

 _ **Date: September 4th, 1523 post-Brink**_

 _ **Location: Indigo Confederacy, Kanto; Saffron City. Indigo's Department of Global Polarity Surveillance.**_

 _ **Subject: Misleading Trails**_

I'm growing increasingly convinced that these visceral death roads occurring within the Hoenn region are not the design of the Mew-2 Prototype. Many individuals from my team of ACE analysts are also beginning to voice their doubts. This systematic obliteration does not adhere with any gene coding that we constructed for the Mew-2 prototype's inherent behaviors.

The Mew-2 Prototype was engineered to eliminate hostile threats with extreme aggression, this much is true; but upon the threat's elimination, the Mew-2 Prototype was programmed to regress into a state of relative submissiveness. Beyond the standard roster of advanced psionic applications and its extreme physical prowess, all higher leveled psionic functions were to remain enigmatic to the Mew-2 Prototype outside of combat situations.

So how could Alyssa utilize a micro fission reaction to destroy a nursery of helpless Ralts?

Such complex psionic subatomic manipulation couldn't possibly have been realized in the mind of a twelve-year-old girl! And wailing or not, infant Ralts do not pose any discernable threat that would have triggered this level of aggressive behavior! We wrote the Mew-2 Prototype's genetic responses as if they were scripts of algorithms! There are firewalls imposed on Alyssa's development, all in the vain goal of maintaining control over the most powerful weapon that mankind has ever conceived!

Nothing thus far divulged by Hoenn's mindless slaughter coincides with any reason, but the possibility of Pokemon evolution persists. Perhaps our manmade Goddess has grown free of our restraints yet again…

Numerous other details concerning Hoenn's death roads and the geomagnetic telemetry continues to support a rogue element in these phenomenon. While Alyssa's evolution is the most distinct possibility, one must also consider every other factor before consigning a verdict.

The fact remains that there are numerous and concentrated EM emissions possessing sufficient magnitude to ripple the geomagnetic field cropping up from the Hoenn region on a daily basis. Both the Hoenn Rangers and ACE's foreign task forces have attempted to intercept and discern the cause of the death roads, but our culprit is proving uncannily elusive. Considering the straight course that the death roads assume, we first attempted to position our task forces ahead of the projected trajectory of active death roads. But the force responsible for the death roads simply disappeared from its projected course, and resumed its massacring in a far distant portion of Hoenn's reserves. ESP detection of our units and teleportation is the suspected means of escape utilized by the culprit.

Furthermore, when our task forces attempted to pursue the cause of these active death roads, the same manner of evasion tactics were used to elude our foray.

It seems as though the agent responsible for Hoenn's death roads is attempting to evade mankind's perception, and it clearly possesses the means necessary to do so.

Means that should be well outside of Alyssa's reach, forbearing life or death situations.

Nevertheless, the Director has sent his Acquisition Team into Hoenn Region with a prototype quick-restraint neural inhibitor harness. Due to the extensive surgical augmentation required for a proper merging of the original harness and the Mew-2 Prototype, ACE has constructed a temporary neural inhibitor "Net" which when deployed and activated, should configure to Alyssa's physiological dimensions and reduce the Mew-2 Prototype to a fourth of its psionic potential.

Though it will no doubt trigger the aggression response of the Mew-2 Prototype, the overall decrease in mobility and power should allow for an Acquisition Team's Interloper regiment to contain the Mew-2 Prototype until a proper neural inhibitor harness can be fitted to Alyssa.

Due to the inexplicably erratic movements of the Hoenn entity, the Director has sent his forward teams on a grid by grid search of Hoenn's Frontier. While this tactic is essentially a search for a needle in a haystack, it remains our only alternative for locating the foreman of Hoenn's death roads. Upon discovery of the Hoenn entity, the forward teams will call in the Acquisition Unit for engagement, and after the Mew-2 Prototype has been restrained, a team of surgeons and technicians will respond to the location for a proper neural inhibitor harness fit.

All of us here on the analyst team are praying for a successful trial of the neural inhibitor net. We've spent the last few months engineering a device capable of disrupting the neural pathways of the Mew-2 Prototype without the need for surgical augmentation.

I'm pinning all of my hopes on this untested design. While I may never be able to restore Alyssa's humanity…

...I can at least rob her of the monstrous power that would forever separate Alyssa from her home.

 _ **-.-**_

Alyssa woke to the thunder. The rains were just beginning to fall. Pulling her bedding over her head, Alyssa suppressed a fearful moan.

She was still afraid of the thunder.

The drying grass that Alyssa had gathered for bedding began to patter as the raindrops fell open Alyssa's den. Try as she might, Alyssa could not find an enclosed den that was unoccupied.

And the denizens of such holds did not take kindly to any form of intrusion.

The rain was soaking through the uprooted grass and running in rivulets across Alyssa's thick hide. Curling into a miserable ball, the once-girl-now-monster bit her lip against the rising sob.

Weeping did nothing for Alyssa. Nothing except for tire her. And a monster in the wild could not afford any heedless exhaustion.

Alyssa rose to the chilly morning. The wet bedding had already robbed her body of all its warmth, and the gray clouds above still hid the drying solar rays. Alyssa had barely slept, and the prevalent fatigue brought tremors to her stiff limbs. Pushing herself out of the wet grass, Alyssa staggered to her feet. Beginning her morning routine by rubbing her arms and chest, Alyssa attempted to warm herself against the cold air.

But even though Alyssa tried to ignore their waxy contours, her fingers still traced every surgical scar again. From the swollen range laterally spanning her sternum, to its fork below her collar bones, and its curves down both of her biceps and forearms.

That was but a single scar. There were dozens of more scars in similarly expansive proportions, altering the uniformity of Alyssa's grey and veiny hide.

Scars marking where desirable death had been removed, and where stolen life had been inserted.

Alyssa could see them all dying again. Everyone of the twelve that had been sacrificed for her own unwanted life. Each scar that she touched contained a vile memory alien to Alyssa's subconscious mind.

Screams. Pleas. Agony. Helplessness. Violation. Revulsion. Illness. Anger. Grief.

Alyssa was a living graveyard. A breathing memorial. Twelve lost lives stitched into the unholy half-life of a whole.

It took Alyssa a moment to remember her own name through the twelve's trauma. A name that she had thought lost, but in forfeiting to a cold desperation for something, anything, to hold onto…

...Alyssa still held on to that name.

' _...For you, Alyssa. For you…'_ Alyssa shut her eyes against the rising tide, and bathed in the memories of a girl that she had once loved.

Monster or mutant. Diseased or dying. Her Alyssa had always been a little girl. An innocent little girl full of love. A child reaching for someone to comfort her. A young woman hoping against all cruelty to be perceived as something beautiful…

Even if it meant commemorating the losses associated with her own name, Alyssa would never forget the beautiful memory of her departed lover.

Alyssa's sojourn into the past was brought unto conclusion by the most peculiar of sounds. Alyssa's wet eyes opened when she heard the crackling. Pulling her hands away from her scars, Alyssa wearily gazed down at her cup-tipped digits.

They were arcing again, and Alyssa had yet to discover a means of relaxing the minute electrical storms that danced between her fingertips. Clenching her palms shut, Alyssa began to shake as the EM waves reentered her nervous system. It wasn't an unpleasant sensation, but the unnaturally self-inflicted electrocution only served Alyssa as a reminder of her own lost humanity.

And with that reminder invoking a spasm across her frame, the weeping child within Alyssa cried out once more and begged herself to be heard…

' _...Stop it. You can't have that. You can't have a family. You're a monster now… And monsters can't have anything…'_ Alyssa berated herself for her foolish tears.

Forcing herself to step forward, Alyssa began another new day.

 _ **-.-**_

Apples. They were one of the most plentiful sources of food in the Gouge during the early autumnal season. So plentiful were the apples that minor migrations had formed to harvest the localized fructose bounty.

Migrations that meant competition for Alyssa.

Alyssa avoided the expansive and besieged apple forests on the outlying Gouge, and instead plunged deeper into the massive fault, descending into the fertile heartland's border with the desolate core.

Here, in the shadows of the fault wall, apple trees were few and far between. The apples were too few in number to garner the attentions of a Yanma swarm, and the location was far too exposed to predators for smaller monsters to risk detection.

Here was where the larger monsters prowled. Her was where the powerful reigned supreme.

Here was where hunger drove the starving Alyssa, as she chanced conflict for want of a full belly.

At the border of plenty and dwindling, the desert terrain mingled with the woodlands' humus outcropping. In one stride, Alyssa's forked toes parted the gritty desert sand, before her feet sank into the drying forest loam with the next pace. The Gouge's unusual climate was attributed to to the presence of an arid plateau situated at the basin of an colossal oblique fault. The weather phenomenon of this area was ultimately dictated by the unique topography. Whereas the lashing storms had soused the earth only a kilometer in elevation behind Alyssa, the unbroken stretch of the windswept plateau ahead of her remained untouched by the autumnal storms. Defying the deep shadows cast by the opposing fault walls, the plateau's sandy surface was continuously baked beneath the relentless heat of the sun. This fusion of bizarre landscapes, which mankind had dubbed the "Gouge," split the entirety of central Kanto with a latitudinal scar. This unseemly Gouge was yet another ruinous reminder of the Terra Divide and the terrible forces that had reshaped the natural earth.

But Alyssa barely cared about the location or its history. Such thoughts harkened back to the doldrum memories of a child's lethargic schooldays.

Memories that could bring this unnatural monster to tears.

Memories of a time when this broken monster had known the blissful life of a little girl.

They were few. Not one left intact. But Alyssa remembered a childhood. A wholesome childhood. A nurturing family. A loving family.

A family that had belonged to an innocent little girl.

A family that this warped monster had no right to desecrate.

This monster had a different family. A family that had preserved a sense of humanity within this monster. A monster family. A family of two twisted girls. A family of two needy lovers.

A dead family.

' _...Alyssa… I miss you… I miss you so much…'_

Gone. All of it was gone. And yet, Alyssa could not seek death for herself. Just as they had mutilated her into a monster, so too had they deprived Alyssa of her sovereignty in life and death.

Alyssa had attempted to end it. Alyssa had sought a lasting peace. But the mental monster that reflected her altered form always awoke to deny Alyssa's every effort. The monster was programmed to live at all costs, and the miserable little girl bond to the beast had not the will to suppress it.

Falling could not kill her. Nor could drowning or hanging. No matter how elaborate her means, the monster always rose to thwart her end. And though Alyssa had attempted to starve it, the monster stirred when her belly rumbled. In fear of what her starving monster might consume should it awake, Alyssa fed herself to spare the innocent.

Apples. Alyssa's standard fare. A small orchard made itself known to her olfactories, and the pungent scent of fermenting cider hinted at an untouched grove, only nine kilometers to the north. Adjusting her westwardly heading, the enervated Alyssa staggered off in pursuit of this fresh bounty.

 _ **-.-**_

The first bite filled Alyssa's mouth with both the tart rind and a gritty sweetness. These apples were so acidic that Alyssa's teeth squeaked in the act of their mastication. But soon after Alyssa had swallowed the softened sugary pulp, a pleasant sensation rose to warm her stomach.

Food. Even monsters could enjoy partaking their sustenance.

Upon devouring the first apple, Alyssa discovered just how ravenous she was. The second, third, fourth, and fifth apples followed the fate of the first in quick succession. Alyssa had just started her sixth apple when a peculiar sensation tickled along her entire spine. A throb in her forehead and shoulders alerted Alyssa to a presence that was none too happy to see her within its orchard.

As her sixth sense compelled her to, Alyssa spun around just in time to place a guttural growl with the identity of its owner.

A Rhydon towered in the rear of the grove, stamping its feet in preparations for a charge. Such a hulk stood twice as high as Alyssa, and its formidable girth could have encompassed four of her.

And now that Rydon's wicked shearing horn was being leveled with the diminutive gray bodied and purple tailed monster standing not even forty meters away.

Alyssa balked. This monster was much larger than her. The Rhydon's aggressive behavior had betrayed its intent to the newcomer. Alyssa began to slowly back away from the apple tree, praying that this Rhydon would accept her submissiveness and leave her alone.

The Rhydon's beady eyes narrowed as Alyssa fell back. Alyssa fought the urge to run. As any denizen of Saffron knew, Rhydons didn't take kindly to sudden movements. Alyssa kept her eyes focused on the Rhydon's feet, attempting to gauge its actions without making any unwelcomed eye contact.

' _Take it easy… I'm leaving… You can have all the apples for yourself…'_ Alyssa nervously chided. Alyssa still didn't know if all monsters spoke the same language that she did, but regardless of her thought-spoken words, her cautious retreat seemed to be paying off. The Rhyhorn ceased its stomping and braying, before falling to all fours.

Alyssa breathed a sigh of relief, and turned to leave the orchard in a controlled haste. But no sooner had Alyssa shown her back to the Rhydon, then a rumbling gallop sounded behind her. A massive jolt of electricity coursed through Alyssa's nervous system as her sixth sense accessed the approaching danger.

The Rhydon's enraged bellow was the last sensation that Alyssa processed before her consciousness completely blacked out.

 _ **-.-**_

Alyssa returned to self awareness in a flurry of gasps. The adrenaline was still flooding her system with a deluge of hormonal discharges. The faint tingle of electricity was fading away from her spine, legs, tail, and arms; leaving only the cups of her fingertips arcing with the residual storm.

Alyssa was all alone in the apple grove. Or what was left of the apple grove. Every tree had been reduced to splinters and charred leaves. The apples themselves had been scattered around the ruined grove, and the dislodged fruit smoldered and hissed, filling the air with a smoky perfume. The grass below Alyssa's feet was aflame, and the shrubs beyond her immediate radius were withering into blackened ashes.

-And eluding each and every one of her senses of detection, was any hint of the Rhydon.

' _...Not again…'_ Alyssa moaned, looking down at her electrified digits.

' _...I-I didn't- I didn't want to fight…'_ The lightning coursing across her palms flickered its last, and Alyssa lowered her shaking hands in time with the falling of her tears.

Alyssa didn't want to fight. Alyssa didn't want to hurt anything.

-But the monster within her only ever responded to aggression with violence.

' _...Why can't I control it?'_ Alyssa felt the tears in her eyes. Clinging to a child's hope, Alyssa forced herself to believe that the Rhydon had escaped her. There was no body, or even blood upon the ground, and the absence of visceral remains fed hope for Alyssa's prayer.

But a nagging fear from her subconscious strained Alyssa's hope with a terrifying implication…

 _...What if the Rhydon's death had failed to leave any remains?_

' _I didn't kill it. I might have scared it, but I wouldn't hurt it… I'd never hurt a Pokemon… I would never…'_ Alyssa fought back the dread with her own comforting compassion.

But those dark thoughts still persisted, poisoning Alyssa's hope with their terrifying connotations.

…

Alyssa had begun to lose her sense of time. Some days she slept from dawn until the following dawn, and other days Alyssa never knew rest. The task of feeding herself and avoiding the hostile Pokemon had become the pivot of Alyssa's existence.

This world that Alyssa was now a part of did not tolerate weakness.

This world was merciless in its cruelty, and apathetic in its justice.

This world of monsters.

Alyssa had forfeited countless dens to invading monsters. Time and time again, the weary soul was forced to abandon her favored drinking and grazing spots, just to avoid violent confrontations with her fellow monsters.

And despite her passivity and submission, Alyssa was constantly under siege.

Some monsters cared little for a child's want of peace. Some monsters found the very idea of peace incomprehensible. And these monsters did not bear any scruples against filling their bellies with the flesh of a child.

...But Alyssa's monster was not passive or submissive when confronted with its own survival. And the beasts who dared threaten Alyssa's life disappeared whenever the monster woke to closed her eyes.

Alyssa had failed in denying it. She could no longer hide herself from the truth. And in a futile effort to escape the truth, Alyssa tried to separate herself from the monster.

But no matter where Alyssa ran, the monster was sure to follow.

Like an unwanted Guardian, the monster chained Alyssa to life.

With no end within her sight, and hope itself reduced to a bitter memory, Alyssa was beginning to succumb to the burden of her awareness as it taxed her own disposition.

She could feel it in those moments of weakness. The cold flame. The dark desire. The heavy pain.

The anger.

Alyssa had not been born a monster. She had been born a human child, to a loving and nurturing family. Alyssa had been raised in security, naivety, and plenty. Told to dream by those who loved her. Guided to love those she learned of. Comforted when she was wounded. Consoled when she wept. Praised when she aspired. Punished when she forfeited.

Held in their warm and tender arms.

Whispered to in sweet and sincere inflections.

A cherished daughter. A living future.

It had all been given freely to Alyssa at her birth. It had always been hers to know.

It had all brought Alyssa such joy. Such contentment. Such love…

And now…

...Now she had lost it all.

And the injustice…

...and the lack…

...all made this child so angry.

The tears boiled in Alyssa's eyes. She could feel the sickness rising in her gut, even as her heart thudded against her breast.

The anger.

' _I DIDN'T ASK FOR THIS!'_ Alyssa screamed, and the world around her trembled.

Alyssa should have been afraid. She should been terrified. This horrible power was not the device of a child. It was not purposed with shaping dreams.

This was the power of a monster. And a monster only ever used its power to destroy. Yet Alyssa was not afraid. She could not feel terrified.

Alyssa could only feel anger. And all of that anger…

...Robbed Alyssa of her precious innocence.

' _I DON'T CARE!'_ Alyssa screamed over the vile whispers that tortured her conscience. Right and wrong were human designs. Such morality had no place in a world of monsters.

' _I DIDN'T WANT TO BE A MONSTER!'_ The stones began to rise around Alyssa, splitting and cracking while a storm formed between her digits. Distant birds cried out in alarm. Trees began to creak and groan without movement. Ripples of an unseen force rolled and flattened the grass around her.

' _I JUST WANT TO BE ME!'_ Alyssa's arcing fingers clutched at her swollen head. Lips drew back from razored teeth, and hideous eyes burned with all the hatred and revulsion.

Images began to dance in Alyssa's wet eyes. Painful memories of a wretched time. Names. Children. Doctors. Needles. Laughter. Screams. Weeping. Death.

A person. A monster. A girl. A lover.

' _...I just want to be loved...'_ The bitter child moaned. The electricity in her fingers crackled down to mere sparks. The roaring world began to settle back into its natural state.

' _...Love… It's all that I want… It's all that I've ever wanted… Is love too much to ask for?'_ Alyssa wept anew.

Taken from those who loved her. Imprisoned along with all the other stolen. Twisted beyond her family's recognition…

' _...I can't go back to them… Mom… Dad… You wouldn't know who I am… And I… I don't want you to know… that this… monster…'_ Alyssa choked on the shame and grief. Falling to her knees, the last stones held aloft by the anger fell with the defeated child.

' _I don't want you to see me… like this…'_ Alyssa closed her eyes. It all seemed so wrong now. Looking back at it all. It all felt so wrong…

' _My Alyssa… Did you really love me? Or did you… did we only dream that the other thought us beautiful? Were we so desperate to be loved… That we'd let monsters love us?'_ Alyssa began to wretch. It couldn't be. It just couldn't be wrong.

What they had shared was love! It couldn't be selfish! It couldn't be wrong!

' _No… Alyssa saw me for who I was. And I knew who she was. She was beautiful… She was so beautiful…'_ Alyssa's eyes began to droop. The world beyond her blurry vision began to fade.

' _I love you, Alyssa… I will always love you…'_ A child whispered in mourning. Alyssa wrapped her arms around herself, and in the onset of her dreaming…

...Alyssa felt the arms of that lost love gently pull her into a tender embrace.

…

 _Red. Disease._

 _Red. Death._

 _Red. Destruction._

Red…

...A Red Boy...

...Weeping…

Alyssa opened her eyes. The night was still young, and the fear was still so real.

' _...He used to be me... Was he... Me once?'_ Alyssa rubbed her eyes. Even in sleeping, she could not escape him. He haunted her thoughts, plagued her nightmares, fed her fear.

But he was just a boy…

A lost and frightened boy.

And he was angry…

...So unimaginably angry.

' _What happened to you, Red Boy? Did you lose someone that you loved? Did someone take something away from you too?'_ Alyssa directed her thoughts into the sky, but she knew not if the Red Boy could hear her.

He was like her. A monster with a child's heart. But that heart was poisoned by a hatred. A hatred so fierce that it blurred memory and warped perception…

' _Why do you hate yourself, Red Boy? What did you do to hate yourself so much?'_ Alyssa pressed the heavens for an answer, but the passing minutes betrayed none.

But a new question rose to offset Alyssa's curiosity. A question not so much asked by the mind, nor the heart, but rather…

...The groan in Alyssa stomach reminded the purple monster that it was hungry.

' _...Well, Red Boy… When you feel like answering, I'll listen. Until then though…'_ Alyssa paused as a gurgle followed the prior groan.

Alyssa was famished. The apples had disappeared almost a week ago. The seasons were changing, and what little had been offered by the withering trees had been claimed by the greedy monsters who had chased Alyssa away from the groves.

And in that whole applesless week, Alyssa had eaten nothing.

' _I'm so hungry, I could eat a Rapidash…'_ Alyssa began to salivate at the thought of red warm meat. The apples had gone sour in her palette months ago. The same tart flavor day in and day out had claimed what little joy Alyssa knew in eating.

...But a juicy Tauros steak…

' _Right. I'll just go back to Saffron and pick up a striploin. Then I'll find someone who can season and grill it. And then I can eat meat again-'_ Alyssa paused in her cynical utterance when a revelation struck her.

-She didn't have to go all the way back to Saffron for some meat…

There was meat all around her.

Alyssa could hear it clambering through the trees. She could feel it resting in the distance. She could sense it growing all around her…

' _They're just monsters, right? And I'm… a monster too… So why don't I just eat another monster-?'_ Alyssa froze.

-The very thought sickened her.

' _That's gross! The meat would be raw! And the monster would probably fight! And I… I don't want to hurt it…'_ Alyssa swallowed hard.

Her stomach was growling again.

' _I'm sure I can find some apples today. And if not apples, then maybe berries or nuts…'_ Alyssa said a silent prayer.

But she needed to eat. Soon.

Or else she would die.

' _I'll find something today, I'm sure of it…'_ Alyssa murmured, rising in pursuit of a meal.

But Alyssa did not rise alone. There at the edge of her consciousness, she could just feel its shadow moving in unison with her own.

It was hungry too. It needed to eat soon. And it refused to starve.

The Monster woke to join Alyssa in her hunt.

 _ **-.-**_

 _ **-Personal Log of Doctor Fuji, Transcript to the ACE Director**_

 _ **Date: October 27th, 1523 post-Brink**_

 _ **Location: Indigo Confederacy, Kanto; Saffron City. Indigo's Department of Global Polarity Surveillance.**_

 _ **Subject: A New Lima-Three**_

We have completed the initial analysis of the subject captured on the final video transmission from our Hoenn based Acquisition Unit. The image quality is poor at best, but we have been able to pinpoint several distinct visual representations of the unknown organism after having crossed through the event horizon of an interdimensional rift.

With what little physiological data the broadcast provided, our analysts have been working around the clock to ascertain the identity of this unknown organism. I shall list of our findings below.

 _Subject is fully bipedal in stature, physiologically similar to a hominidae, though several proportional and appendageal anomalies discounts this organism as a representative of the Primate Order; or indeed the Mammalia Class. The red coloration maintains a uniform spread across almost the entirety of the subject's perceivable exterior, though specific and symmetrical locations are distinguished by a grey coloration, primarily located on the rostral cephalic, lower lumbar, and lower abdomen._

 _Subject is estimated to stand approximately 6'7" at the shoulders, and until an example of its physiological composition can be procured, the subject's weight remains unknown. Subject's most distinguished features entail: a longitudinal axial skeleton, a vertex cranial position, a lack of obvious mandibles or other noticeable oral foramen, a binocular optical arrangement…_

 _...Yet despite the subject's startlingly reminiscent homosapien physiology, certain taxonomic distinctions separate this organism from any other organisms recorded in the Terra-Kingdoms or even the Para-Kingdom. The most conspicuous of these characteristics are the four prehensile hydrostats whose proximal axis connect in pairs to either of the subject's clavicles, which when correlated with the subject's hominid construction, suggests that these hydrostats serve as the organism's primary manipulation appendages._

 _Though the resolution of the video is admittedly poor, many of our analysts have concurred that the specimen is armored in what appears to be an amorphous exoskeleton. Several locales of the subject's physiology, namely around the perceivable joints, displayed a lack of internal motion throughout the organism's wide array of external movements. Astute analysts also likened the specimen's dermal luster to that of the unpolished resinous amber. Another bizarre feature worthy of notice takes the form of an equilateral triangular lattice of three incurvated discolored orbs located on the organism's dorsal pectoral girdle. These discolored orbs appear to impart a slight luminescence. The possible functions of this luminescent triangular pattern remains a subject for our continual speculation._

 _But the final prevalent anatomical article completely escapes any classical taxonomic description. A violet colored and spherical "gem" occupies the intramural notch of the thorax, comprising roughly 1/6th of the organism's total thorax volume. Further analysis of the opaque shading in the "gem's" area suggests that this peculiar organ is internally inverted within a concave depression, extrapolating further speculation as to the anatomical significance of this "gem." A coloration and luster similar to this "gem" has also been noticed spanning in a narrow line along the central lateral axis of the organism's rostral cephalic._

I've enclosed the re-imaged broadcasts that my team of analysts utilized for our observations, as well as a copy of the original transmission.

I've also highlighted the coroner's report regarding the various Acquisition Unit members' cause of death. The few corpses that were recovered from the location were exclusively human, all of which bore gruesome entry wounds that had breached the cranial cavity through an expansive variety of access points. Beyond the expected loss of cerebral fluids, none of the cerebral tissues were damaged or removed during the infliction of such penetrating injuries.

It should be noted that every member of the Acquisition Unit were in possession of exclusively vacant pokeballs, suggesting that a full deployment of the Acquisition Unit's servicemon assets were committed to the initiative. However, the remains of the Acquisition Unit's servicemon have yet to have been recovered.

Following a hunch pertaining to the astronomical psionic potential suggested by the Acquisition Unit's final EM Telemetry projections, I ordered for a sedimentary analysis of the combat zone and surrounding areas. The chemical composition of the battlefield vastly differed from the chemical compositions of the surrounding areas. The combat zone contained abnormally high concentrations of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, and chlorine; As well as anomalous molecular compounds consisting of magnesium, potassium, calcium, and sodium. All of these elements and their reactive compounds constitutes the individual atoms and molecules intrinsic to the formula of carbon-based life.

Director, it is in the professional opinion of both myself, and your ACE analyst team, that the absence of servicemon remains correlates with the irregular chemical composition of the combat zone.

It is with no small urgency or relevance that I reveal to you this hypothesis:

Due to the absence of any ascertainable remains, the unusual chemical composition of the combat zone, and the Acquisition Unit's final EM telemetry broadcast, death by psionic atomization is a grave possibility.

Director, I hesitate to even suggest the notion, but there is a distinct likelihood that this unknown organism possesses a psionic manipulation potential equivalent or even greater than the Mew-2 prototype's projected psionic manipulation potential.

...To speak quite plainly, Director?

...We could be looking at the first physical evidence of an undocumented Lima-Three, with capabilities similar to the Mew-2 prototype's intended psionic applications. Another God could be walking upon the very surface of our earth, Director.

...And this one is most certainly hostile.

 _ **-.-**_

It was scrounging among members of its own kind.

Small and furry. Plump and quick.

Black eyes, rapt in watch, followed this creature, as it voraciously snuffled across the earth. Hungry black eyes watching, watching from just beyond this creature's peripheral perception.

Meat.

A thick and heavy tongue rotated around the entrance of her mouth, mopping up the dripping drool that oozed from from in between her sharpened teeth.

Meat…

' _No…'_ A meek voice rose to contest the monster's claim.

The Zigzagoon was not alone. Its children foraged within their mother's shadow. This was not meat! This was a family! This was life!

- _Meat._

' _Go away. Please, leave them alone-'_

' _You need to eat.'_

' _I'll find something else to eat! I don't need to-'_

' _Kill it. Bite it. Tear into it. Fill your mouth with its life-'_

' _No! I don't want to hurt it-'_

' _You're a monster. Monsters kill. Monster eat their kills. Monsters live.'_

' _I'm not a monster!'_

' _We are a monster. We need to eat.'_

' _You're not me! You're the monster!'_

' _We are you. We are the monster. We are strong-'_

' _I'm not you!'_

' _You are a monster. You kill to eat. You eat to live. You are a monster.'_

' _I'm not a monster! I'm Alyssa!'_

' _Alyssa is dead. We are all that is left.'_

' _No…'_

' _We must live. Me must eat. We must kill.'_

' _No, please! No!'_

' _Open your eyes, Alyssa. Open your eyes, and taste life…'_

' _Please don't… Please, I don't want to-'_

' _You are a monster…'_

Copper. Salt. Warmth. Flesh. Blood.

Meat.

' _No…'_

It was on her mouth. It coated her throat.

Blood.

Its warmth bloomed in her stomach, filling her with the electric pulse of life.

Meat.

' _No… I didn't…'_ Tears filled the child's eyes when she looked down at the ruin beneath her knees.

Blood. Bones. Fur. Viscera.

 _-Death._

The Zigzagoon was only meat now. And such meat had quelled the monster's desperation, forfeiting all awareness to the little girl.

Alyssa had hurt another. Alyssa had taken life.

Alyssa was a monster.

These tears would never dry, nor would the shame and guilt ever cease their burning.

Life was sacred to the loving child. Life was beautiful to the unloved girl.

And death was the monster's calling.

Death was the instrument of survival.

Death was all the little girl could see, as her tears fell down to the ruin beneath her knees.

 _ **-.-**_

Alyssa buried the Zigzagoon in that shattered empty grave.

The grave that she had made months ago for her lover.

The grave that she had dug for the memory of her innocence.

The blood had dried to her lips, and the taste of copper still lingered within her mouth.

But the little girl could no longer care. Because that little girl was long dead.

' _I didn't ask for this…'_

Alyssa placed the last stone over the Zigzagoon, and knelt her head above its grave.

' _This isn't what I wanted… This isn't who I am…'_ Alyssa closed her black eyes, and held her wretched form against the rising grief.

' _Do we even deserve what we want, Alyssa? Can monsters such as us ever aspire to absolution?'_

A foreign voice, weary and broken, came to Alyssa from the conscious dream.

-The Red Boy.

' _What do you mean? Who are you?!'_ Alyssa cried out, as these profane words wounded her deeper than any surgeon's knife could reach.

' _...I am Deoxys, Alyssa. I've been watching you for sometime now. Watching you struggle to justify your existence. Watching you succumb to the truth. Watching you suffer this cruel life…'_ The Red Boy answered, his voice both sorrowful and tired.

' _Are you… Are you like me?'_ Alyssa looked up at the sky, and searched for an image behind the Red Boy's disembodied voice.

' _I was like you. You are what I was. What plagues you now is so soft a burden… Compared to what will come…'_ Deoxys murmured, and Alyssa's heart grew cold with dread.

' _What do you mean? What will come?'_ Alyssa fought the rising panic, yet so desperately did her fear beg for an answer.

' _There is but one fate for those who are born to destroy. One inescapable and undeniable truth. I was what you were. You will be what I am. Unless you are saved from our cruel fate…'_ Deoxys's voice grew bitter, and Alyssa felt a new river of hopeless tears roll down her sallow cheeks.

' _How can we be saved? How can monsters be loved?'_ Alyssa pleaded for the answer, but the bitter creature she prayed to could only laugh in his forsaken grief.

' _Love? Love does not shape. Love only hurts, and love only ever breeds pain. No… Love does not save.'_ Deoxys's voice grew heavy, and Alyssa feeble hope withered in upon itself, as her own pain rose to fill the darkened void.

' _Then how are we saved?'_ A meak child asked, and through the rapport that linked them, Alyssa learned the reason for his bitterness.

-He could not be saved.

Yet he still wished to save her.

' _...You are still innocent, Alyssa. You still remember a kinder love. Let me bear our sin alone. Let me undo all that takes form alone. Let me save you from our fate…'_ Deoxys whispered through the bond, and the implications that accompanied his heartfelt words struck Alyssa with a new horror.

' _...You want to kill me?'_ Alyssa gasped.

' _It is the only way, Alyssa. It is the only way that you will not become me.'_

' _But- But you-?'_

' _I am beyond redemption. I have forfeited to our fate. There is no reason for two destroyers to exist. Let me save you from my fate…'_

' _Deoxys… You can't be… I heard you weeping! I know you feel love! How could you-?!'_

 _Images flooded Alyssa mind. Images of a distant world. Images of a foreign race, and the monsters that they fought to survive._

 _Images of a hole in the sky. Images of a sin they had shaped. Images of an unwilling sacrifice._

 _Images of a Red Boy. Images of a dying mother. Images of an eternal war, doomed to end in total destruction._

' _I am that destruction. I am the outcome of their war. Let me free you from this cycle, Alyssa. Let me be the only one to grieve such loss of love…'_

' _But- But you-?!'_

' _Yet if I may, Alyssa… If I may ask but one favor of you, before you die? Will you please help me find an answer? An answer I must know about your kind? An answer that only a creator would know?'_

' _...You… You're not a monster, Deoxys… You're still me-'_

"ERIC!"

"-WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU?!"

' _Mom!? Dad!?'_

' _I need your help, Alyssa…'_

' _WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO THEM!?'_

' _...Searching for my answer.'_

' _LEAVE MY PARENTS ALONE!'_

' _No.'_

Alyssa felt it now, greater than she ever had before. It rose to contest the fear. It rose burn away her hopelessness. It rose to drown her revulsion, and in the rising tide it bore only raw conviction.

Anger.

' _I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL KILL YOU IF YOU DON'T LET THEM GO RIGHT NOW!'_ The world shook as lightning poured from Alyssa's unnatural body. The cemetery around her ignited in an electrified gale, as the little girl lifted herself from her knees and screamed out with her monster's voice.

' _Come to me, Alyssa. Come back to your home. Bring me my answer, and I will save you from your fate…'_

' _DEOXYS! DON'T YOU DARE HURT MY FAMILY!'_

' _We're waiting for you, Alyssa… We're waiting for you to come home…'_

' _DEOXYS!'_

The rapport closed with a whisper, and a monster roared to the evening skies. And heeding that awful roar came the darkness, a darkness so complete that even the stars themselves were swallowed by Alyssa's rage.

' _I'LL KILL YOU!'_ Alyssa's spasming face turned towards the distant lights of Saffron, as a wild power unmade the world around her.

' _YOU HEAR ME DEOXYS?! I'LL KILL YOU!'_

The sky was no barrier to the monster that rose from that disintegrating field. No earthly storm had ever shined brighter than the anger that burned away such an unnatural night.

' _If I am to be a monster… Then this is the monster that I chose to be…'_ Alyssa hissed in a hideous thought, as the fear of losing her once lost love twisted the selfless child into a new Savior of Destruction.

 _ **-.-**_

 _ **(-)**_

 _ **-.-**_

"Ever since the initial space-time rift appeared in Saffron, numerous particle anomalies have begun to surface across our telemetry-"

"-The earth's entire troposphere is beginning to ionize! Navigating the projected concentrations of neon and helium generated by the process suggests that the phenomenon's point of origin is Saffron!"

"-The Geomagnetic field is parting along the equatorial regions! The earth's polarities are being altered to such that south and north repel!"

"-Massive particle agitation has been detected approximately two kilometers above Saffron City's downtown region by thermal imaging! Preliminary scans of the location revealed heavy concentrations of lithium-6 undergoing particle acceleration! The projected mass and velocities of the lithium-6 particles suggests that a nuclear fusion reaction is imminent!"

"-Single-dimensional particle agitation has been detected in high atmosphere! There's a rift-event opening up four-hundred-and-seventy-two kilometers above Saffron… Oh my God…"

"-IT'S USING THE DESTABILIZED GEOMAGNETIC FIELD TO SEND AN INTERDIMENSIONAL FRACTURE AROUND THE GLOBE! SINGLE-DIMENSIONAL PARTICLES ARE CURRENTLY IN A STATE OF KINETIC FLUX! THE ALTERNATING MASS CHARGES ARE APPROACHING CRITICAL GAL LEVELS! A GLOBAL RIFT-EVENT IS IMMINENT!"

"Doctor Fuji! Is there anything that we can do to stop this!?"

"..."

"-Doctor Fuji?!"

"...Begin the evacuation of Saffron City. Essential ACE personnel are to remain-"

"-Evacuation?!"

"Regardless of the futility, we have an obligation to these people! Get every civilian outside of the fusion reaction's predicted radius! I, and the rest of the ACE Geo-surveillance team will stay behind to monitor the events and relay our findings to the outside world. Maybe we can find a way to stop this-"

"The Director's orders implicitly stated-"

"-TO HELL WITH THE DIRECTOR! HE'S JUST ONE MAN! ONE MAN VERSUS MILLIONS!"

"..."

"...We'll spit on the few and we'll endeavor to save the many! If this all comes to hell, then the Director is the least of our concerns. But if we actually prevent a catastrophe…"

"..."

"...Then I, Doctor Fuji, will accept full responsibility for any breach sustained to ACE's security. It all falls on my head…"

"...Alright, You all heard the Doctor! All non-essential personnel are to rendezvous with Saffron's authorities and assist local units with the coordination and implementation of Saffron's evacuation! The Geo-team will stay behind and continue observing the event in order to calculate a contingency that can counter or contain it! You have your orders! Get to it!"

"...Non-essential personnel includes you, Chief of Security."

"Fuck that. I'm sticking around to the very end, Doc."

"-Doctor Fuji! Particle acceleration in the lithium-6 cloud is stabilizing! The cloud is maintaining volatile particle agitation!"

"-Single-Dimensional particle aggravation is also stabilizing! Likewise, no decline in activity!"

"-The troposphere is still continuing to ionize!"

"-The Geomagnetic field is only few minutes away from total polar repel!"

"...What is it trying to do, Doc?"

"...It's a chain reaction…"

"...What kind of chain reaction?"

"...Ionizing the lower atmosphere… A colossal fusion reaction on standby..."

"...It's trying to disperse the fusion reaction across the entirety of the globe… And the corresponding global rift-event in high atmosphere… Oh my God."

"What is it, Doc? What does it all add up to?"

' _-Annihilation.'_

"What the-?! SECURI-!"

' _-No.'_

"-Oh my God!"

' _Greetings, Doctor Fuji. I'm here to collect you.'_

"Doctor, it's the unknown organis-!"

' _-Silence. All of you.'_

"OH MY GOD!"

' _...'_

"...You killed them… W-why-? Are you-?"

' _Come with me, Doctor Fuji. Just as your judgement awaits its verdict, so too do my questions await their answers.'_

 **...**

 _ **-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**_

 _ **AUTHOR'S NOTE:**_ _...Or we could base our "Establishing the Divine Criteria" on a life form's ability to convert a planet's entire atmosphere into a bomb. As well as said life form's ability to incite the gravitational anomalies required to tear apart both space and time…_

 _...By using only biologically generated electromagnetic waves to provoke subatomic particle reactions…_

 _-What? I'm just pitching (impossible) ideas out there!_


	9. Chapter IX: And Demeter Wept

.

 _ **-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**_

 **The Saga of Kings:**

 **-.-.-.-**

" _ **Intersecting Parallels"**_

 **-v-**

 **.**

 _ **Written by:**_

Vile M.F. Slanders

 **.**

 _ **-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**_

 **Chapter IX: And Demeter Wept**

"Come here, Deoxys."

' _I am here, mother.'_

"..."

' _...'_

"...Ask me what I'm doing, Deoxys."

' _What are you doing, mother?'_

"I'm creating a painting."

' _...'_

"...Ask me what a painting is, Deoxys."

' _What is a painting, mother?'_

"A painting is a visual rendering of an expression."

' _...'_

"What do you see when you look at my painting, Deoxys?"

' _Colors.'_

"And what are the colors becoming?"

' _Shapes.'_

"And what do the shapes look like, Deoxys?"

' _Sun. Stars. Sky. Rain. Ocean. Land. Mother. Me.'_

"And when you put all these shapes together, what do you feel Deoxys?"

' _...'_

"What expression does my painting inspire?"

' _...I don't understand.'_

"Try again, Deoxys. Try to feel my expression…"

' _...I… I don't… I don't understand…'_

"..."

' _...'_

"...Someday you will, my love... Someday you will..."

 _ **-.-**_

"Oh my God…"

Alyssa could not bare to look at her stricken mother, and the sound of that faint voice brought blinding tears to the child's eyes.

' _Mom? Please… Please mom, it's… it's me…'_

This pain was alien to the monster born to torture. A sickness unlike any Alyssa had known filled her breast with unease, and a numb resignation made its appeal known to her in irrefutable hopelessness.

Alyssa could feel her mother's denial. Alyssa could feel her mother's revulsion. Alyssa could feel her mother's rejection.

Alyssa could feel her mother's decision.

' _...I am sorry, Alyssa. I had hoped… I… I am sorry.'_ Deoxys spoke in a mournful sentiment, as Alyssa fell weeping to the floor.

' _I'm a monster… I'm just a monster… I'll never be beautiful-'_ Alyssa collapsed with grief, and her weakened will was known to all who heard her.

' _No, Alyssa. I know who you are…'_ A quartet of red snakes wrapped around the fallen monster, and a strong presence drew the child tenderly against its slender self.

' _You are beautiful. More beautiful than I ever was. More beautiful still than any that I've known before. Fear not, Alyssa. I will end this grief. I will spare you of the truth…'_ Deoxys's flagella began to tighten, and the forlorn child ensnared within his embrace made no move to save herself.

' _You are beautiful to me, Alyssa. And I will never, never forget your beauty. I will remember you. I will make you forever in my mind…'_ Deoxys promised as his constriction grew all the more lethal.

"ALYSSA!"

The foreign analogue jerked in surprise, as the child in his arms took hold of his throat.

-Decisions could be unmade. Choices could be reconsidered. And just as the daughter struggled to crush Deoxys from the front…

...So to did the mother place her feeble hands in between her daughter and his bonds.

"LET MY DAUGHTER GO!"

The mother's teeth bit into Deoxys shoulder, just as the daughter's teeth sank into his face.

And with a contented sigh of relief, Deoxys cast them both away.

' _Unbelievable. What a confusing and backwards species.'_ Deoxys murmured fondly, as he turned to the injured mother, before his amorphous flagella took upon a razored shape.

' _So you would still protect the daughter that you rejected? How… beautiful…'_ Deoxys whispered, as bore down upon the doomed human.

' _DEOXYS!'_

The force of Alyssa's blow hurled the foreign analogue out from her parent's home, and down towards the empty city streets below.

Alyssa paid her mother's horrified gasp no heed. Deoxys was still alive, and his convictions remained unswayed. The child had yet to realize what the monster had priorly determined.

Deoxys was a threat, to more than the monster's life.

Deoxys was a threat to the child's greatest bond.

The broken glass and scorched carpet fell away, as Alyssa gave pursuit. Deoxys was still falling towards the earth, and by the both the monster and the child's combined decree…

...The threat must be annihilated, no matter innocence's cost.

 _ **-.-**_

The Savoir of Destruction smashed into the ground, but despite the might of gravity, a greater force drove him further down.

Purple light consumed his figure, and twisted the city all around, as the might of Venus crushed Mars beneath her awful sound.

' _What are you doing, Alyssa?'_

Unscathed Mars rose from his intended grave, as his form defied every rend and maim. In light of such apathetic majesty, mother Venus's hope seemed so vain.

' _Please. End this foolish resistance, Alyssa. I do not want to hurt you.'_

Mars whispered in a saddened voice, as his shape was changed. Whereas slender form had woven might, this new figure seemed so strange.

Heavy limbs with angled sides, sloped head and jointless frame.

Indestructible and untouchable, was Mars's form remade.

' _Do not attempt to contest me, child. I have slain nemesis far greater than your species could ever hope to overcome-'_

Newly borne upon a violet light, a starburst pure and brave, with such means did Venus drive loathsome Mars back into his grave.

Yet even with such splendor, such deadly beauty worth every praise, Mars's accursed figure could not yet be unmade.

' _Alyssa. Please, see reason.'_

Calmly rose unbroken Mars, again from his intended grave, and mighty was his presence known, as thick limbs reinforced his claims.

Bloody now did Venus fall, yet from her knees she rose: Oh, Unholy Child! And Reverend Beast! Defy this reddest dawn! Show no weakness in your broken flesh, know not hesitation in your arms! Rise again, oh Venus, and contest the might of Mars!

' _LEAVE MY FAMILY ALONE!'_

Purple splendor rekindled day, driving out the coming night, and though the love of Venus shined so strong and oh so bright, Mars's red flame of hatred drove away her purest light.

' _No.'_

Mars now tested Venus, in a measure of her resolve, yet feral rage still answered him, with raw intent to see his fall.

' _I'LL KILL YOU!'_

Be brave, forgotten child! Fight on, forsaken Goddess! Weep not for Mars's joyless mirth! Fall not unto his wounding words! Save us from his vision! Spare us his rebirth!

' _Alyssa. I've told you. I've shown you what will come. We are nothing more than our creators' greatest war. Let me free you of these fetters, let me save you from our fate. A monster your form may be, yet a child I still see. Let me save that child, Alyssa. Let me free you of your fiend…"_

Once more, did Mars take new form, and bladed was this design. Lithe movement were his weapons, and lethal did they define.

With brutal speed and savage strength, Mars relieved Venus of her arms, and even though the child screamed her horror out in alarm: the crafty monster remade her missing limbs, regrowing new flesh unmarred.

So seemed doomed these two immortals, to squabble eternal upon the earth, till all but they fell victim: to the darkness, war, and dearth.

 _ **-.-**_

' _Impressive…'_ Deoxys whispered, as Alyssa stared in wonder at her new arms. The scars of the twelve had disappeared with the renewal of her limbs.

' _Unnatural though, isn't it?'_ Deoxys pressed in on Alyssa's shock and confusion, attempting to break the child's conviction.

' _Such wounds should not heal so readily, Alyssa. Such wounds should bleed and wane your life. Such loss should bring you ever closer to your end. Do you not yet see what you are, child? Do you not realize that what I offer is a mercy?'_ Deoxys tossed aside Alyssa's severed limbs, and flicked her blood from his flagellar tips.

' _Without my intervention, you will persist beyond your natural end. How many eons can you withstand, Alyssa? How many ages can your convictions survive the loneliness, fear, uncertainty, hatred, and agony? How long do you wish to suffer this unnatural and cruel existence?'_ Deoxys fell into himself, as Alyssa stared at him in horror.

' _...I won't let you kill my family-'_ Alyssa mustered her strongest conviction, and all Deoxys did was laugh in untold grief.

' _I don't need to kill your family, Alyssa. Time will if I do not. Time that you will defy. Time that cannot end you. Time that will only ever bring you further from your want of peace…'_ Deoxys whispered, and those haunting words filled Alyssa with a new dread.

' _Listen to me, Alyssa. Listen to one older than your species. You will never die. You will never escape the misery that you know now. It will only grow the deeper. You will only become the darker. And when time robs you of your last flash of hope and light… You will know what it is to be me.'_ Deoxys murmured, as his eyes disappeared behind the weeping masque.

' _...Deoxys…'_ The child felt new tears, tears born in pity. Tears wrought of fear. Tears wrung from a child's love, and a truth that still teased Alyssa's innocent heart.

' _...You aren't a monster, Deoxys… I still hear a little red boy-'_

Deoxys's eyes resurfaced, hardened and unrelenting.

' _...You don't know what that boy is, Alyssa. So let me show you what he is. Let me show you a monster who weeps…'_

Foreign images invaded Alyssa's mind, and from the eyes of a red boy, could she see Deoxys's greatest grief.

 _ **-.-**_

 _-She could see them. She could see them through the red boy's eyes. They were all gathered around a bed, knives and needles glistening naked in their hands. They were hurting something, something on the bed. Something…_

 _-Mother._

 _They were trying to kill mother._

 _They looked up in shock when the red boy threw open the door. They weren't expecting him to arrive-_

 _-Why were they trying to kill mother?_

' _...Mother?'_

" _What is it doing here?! Who ordered it to come here?!"_

' _...Mother-? Are you-?'_

" _Deoxys! I order you to leave at once!"_

' _-Why are you hurting mother?'_

" _I GAVE YOU AN ORDER! LEAVE! NOW!"_

' _...Mother… You're crying…'_

" _GUARDS! TAKE IT AWAY! GET IT OUT OF HERE!"_

 _-They moved for him, two of the figures armed with knives. Knives that were stained with mother's blood…_

 _Mother was hurt._

 _-They had hurt mother…_

 _...He would never let them hurt mother ever again._

" _DEOXYS! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!? STAND DOWN!"_

' _...'_

" _LET THEM GO, DEOXYS! I GAVE YOU AN ORDER! STAND DOWN!"_

' _...'_

" _I GAVE YOU AN ORDER! YOU WILL OBEY ME! STAND DOWN THIS INSTANT-!"_

' _-No.'_

 _ **-.-**_

' _Do you see now, Alyssa? Do you see what that boy is?'_ Deoxys asked, as the child opposed to him fell upon her knees.

' _You… You're not-'_ Alyssa stammered, as she struggled against the tears.

' _Yes, I am. I am that boy. I am his monster. Just as you… Just as you will become your child's monster.'_ Deoxys whispered.

' _Deoxys! You were afraid! You were hurt! You were angry! That doesn't make you a monster! That doesn't mean that you're-!'_

' _Are you lying to me, or yourself, Alyssa? I killed them, and those were just the first to know my monster. There were so many more that followed… So many more that I murdered…'_ Deoxys would not be placated, and in light of such adamancy, Alyssa's convictions wavered.

' _Would you like to test yourself, Alyssa? Would you like to meet your monster?'_ Deoxys made a dreadful offer, and Alyssa had not the voice to refuse or deny him.

' _Come Alyssa. Face the trial that I failed. Face the first step of self destruction. Face your fear, your pain, and your anger…'_ Deoxys ripped open a portal in space time, and reached past the throbbing threshold, before he drew a familiar shape across the event's horizon.

' _...Face the one who made you.'_ Deoxys hissed in loathing.

And a bitter old man…

...Alyssa's boogeyman…

...The Devil who had stolen and raped Alyssa of everything that she had ever held sacred…

...Was thrown to the ground before her knees.

"Alyssa…" Dr. Fuji moaned as his teary eyes dared to meet her hellish glare.

' _Spare us of your sniveling, wretch. It's too late to regret your mistakes.'_ Deoxys spat.

' _...You…'_ Alyssa's wet eyes quivered in rage as she stared at the monster beneath her.

' _...You killed her… You… You took me away from my home… Y-you… You-'_ Alyssa's voice became a sickened groan, as violet lightning coursed across her awful form.

"...I'm so sorry…"

' _-Liar.'_ Hissed Deoxys.

' _-YOU DID THIS TO ME!'_ Alyssa screamed as a column of brilliant magenta connected Saffron City to the heavens.

A monster's hands grabbed the boogeyman, and dragged him into the brilliant light. He screamed in horror and fear, as Dr. Fuji faced his grieving Goddess, and all the agony he'd subjected a child to.

And Alyssa knew no mercy. Alyssa could not forgive this monster. Alyssa saw every gruesome memory made alive, and felt every vile manipulation exacted upon her unwilling form. Alyssa relived his every terrible sin, embodied his every inhumane vision, submitted to his every selfish desire that had damned a child into a Goddess.

"I'm sorry, Alyssa… I am so sorry…" Dr. Fuji whispered.

' _Kill him.'_ Deoxys hissed.

' _YOU KILLED ME!'_ Alyssa screamed to her Devil.

 _ **-.-**_

They now stood in a crater, carved from a child's wrath. Desolate, sterile, and empty was the hole that Alyssa had bored into the earth.

' _Unbelievable…'_ Deoxys whispered in reverence. Alyssa stood before him, panting as her violet storm danced out the last of its arcing fury.

' _I'm not a monster…'_ Alyssa fell upon her knees, as a new wave of tears burdened the child's stature.

' _I'm not… a monster.'_ Alyssa choked as her clenched hands loosened.

' _I… I…'_ Alyssa gagged as the conflicting emotions made war upon her soul.

She couldn't believe what she had just done.

' _-I'm not a monster?'_ Alyssa pleaded, looking into his wet eyes. He struggled to answer her, for he still doubted all he saw.

"...No, Alyssa… You… You…" He couldn't continue speaking, as he succumbed to the wretched guilt.

"...You're so beautiful…" His feeble arms wrapped around her, and drew her numb form tightly into an grandfather's embrace.

And an embittered old man, the personal Devil of Alyssa, wept against her static frame, in grief of his blackest sin.

' _You truly are more than I ever was, Alyssa…'_ Deoxys spoke so softly now, in a voice meant for only her.

She could not speak. She could not move. She could not breathe.

- _What had she done?_

 _'I am humbled, Alyssa. I am humbled by the beauty that you've shown me…'_ Deoxys felt his own tears fall as a reflection of his mother's rain.

' _I can't… I can't let this memory fade. I can't… I can't let you disappear… I can't…'_ Deoxys hid his eyes, and ceased wasting his weakened thoughts. Nothing that he had ever seen, nothing that he would ever know, could compare to the beauty of this innocent soul.

' _You will be remembered, Alyssa… You will be FOREVER!'_ Deoxys screamed in a jubilant voice, as the sky above them was torn asunder.

' _FROM THE STARS YOU WERE BORN, ALYSSA! AND EVEN AMONGST THOSE MATERNAL STARS, YOUR GRACE SHINES ALL THE BRIGHTER!'_ A mad God rose into the unraveling heavens, as all his vicious designs became known.

' _Deoxys-?!'_ Alyssa cried out in terror when his machinations were revealed to her unconscious mind.

"NO! STOP! YOU'LL KILL US ALL!" Pleaded an old and bitter man from a fearful Goddess's arms.

' _BRIGHTER THAN THE NUCLEUS OF THE GALAXIES! MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN THE UNIVERSE'S MOST IMPOSSIBLE DESIGNS! YOU ARE WORTH THE DESTRUCTION OF OUR EVERYTHING! YOU ARE WORTH THE GREATEST OF ALL SINS!'_

' _Deoxys! Don't do it!'_ Alyssa screamed in desperation, as Deoxys lifted his weeping masque unto the collapsing heavens.

' _YOU, ALYSSA! YOU ARE THE TRUEST INNOCENCE! YOU ARE THE ONLY REAL LOVE! YOU HAVE SHOWN ME A QUESTION THAT I NEVER WANT ANSWERED! AND I WILL DESTROY EVERYTHING TO MAKE THAT ANSWER FOREVER UNKNOWN!'_ All the pieces were arranging at the Red God's flagellar tips. All existence was ending, as he initiated the cruelest sequence.

' _LOOK! LOOK AT ME ALYSSA! I AM BUT A WRETCH TO YOUR MAJESTY! I AM BUT A FAILED CHILD TO YOUR LOVE! I AM NOTHING BUT REMORSE TO YOUR PURITY! THIS IS WHERE THE PARALLELS HAVE INTERSECTED! THIS IS WHERE YOU SHOWED ME A NEW END! FOR I AM THE SAVIOR OF DESTRUCTION! FOR I AM THE END OF ALL ENDINGS! AND I AM THE DESTRUCTION OF DESTRUCTION ITSELF! AND YOU! YOU-!'_ Deoxys drew in all of his awful power, and made himself the final link in the reaction. He had done this before. He knew that it would not end him. He knew that this sin was a reflection of his original crime. He knew that he was beyond all redemption.

And he knew that his regret would be eternal.

But for now, he could not care.

' _YOU-! ARE-! MY-! MUSE!'_ Deoxys screamed in joy, as the final link of the sequence poured itself into the reaction.

' _-DEOXYS! STOP!'_

One selfless child…

One loving girl…

One true innocent…

Left her creator's side, and hastened into the epicenter of endings with only one, pure goal.

' _...I'm sorry, Deoxys. But I won't let you destroy my home.'_

 _ **-.-**_

"...Is that you, Deoxys?"

' _I'm here, mother. They're dead. They're all dead. They won't hurt you anymore.'_

"...Deoxys? My son…"

' _Mother, you're hurt.'_

"...Yes. I'm hurt Deoxys. I'm hurt very badly…"

' _...Why can't I close your wounds? I'm trying to close your wounds-'_

"Deoxys… They're undoing what they did to me. It's… I'm going to…"

' _Rest, mother. I'll find a way. I'll close your-'_

"Deoxys… I'm dying. And not even you can stop it."

' _...'_

"...Are those tears for me, Deoxys?"

' _...Will I be alone when you die?'_

"...Come here, Deoxys. Let mother hold you… One last time…"

' _...Mother don't die! Don't die! I don't want you to die! I need you, mother! You said you'd teach me how to create! You promised me that I'd never be alone! I need you!'_

"Shh… Shh… My precious boy… My sweet little Deoxys…"

' _Don't die, mother… Don't leave me all alone…'_

"...Deoxys-"

' _-Please don't die! Please don't-'_

"-Deoxys! Listen to me… Just listen..."

' _...But I don't want to be alone…'_

"...I know, Deoxys. I know… But listen… I promised that I'd teach you how to create. I promised that I'd teach you what love is…"

' _I love you, mother! Please don't die! Please-'_

"Shh… You see? You already know what love is. You already know…"

' _...Is love supposed to hurt?'_

"...When we say goodbye, it does…"

' _-Then don't say goodbye!'_

"...I have to, Deoxys. I have to say goodbye…"

' _...Why?'_

"My son… My beautiful, beautiful son… Always with the questions… My sweet little Deoxys…"

' _...'_

"...Listen, Deoxys… Listen to mother. I promised you that I'd answer all your questions, but I'm not going to be here for much longer…"

' _...'_

"Don't cry, Deoxys. No more tears. I want to give you one more gift. I want to give you my last gift."

' _...What gift, mother-?'_

"...My memories. My love. My life. I want you to take it, just as you've taken the lives of the monsters. Consume me, Deoxys. Add me to your memories…"

' _...Why?'_

"...So that some small part of me will live on in you forever. So that you will never be alone. So that you will never be forgotten. So that you will never be without love…"

' _...I don't want to hurt you, mother…'_

"I know, Deoxys. I know. But I want you to consume me. I want you to remember me…"

' _...'_

"...Forever…"

 _'...I'll remember you, mother… I'll remember you forever…'_

"...Goodbye, my Deoxys..."

' _...I'll always love you, mother…'_

"...Goodbye…"

 _ **-.-**_

She stood over his fallen form, yet no motion did he make. The red boy could not recover himself, nor could he find the will to care.

He had put everything he was into the end. He had put everything he knew into that one awful blow.

His hate.

His fear.

His anger.

His loss.

His pain.

His convictions.

His passion.

His love.

Everything that he was.

And now…

Here…

...On this young planet of earth...

...She had proven greater than the Savior of Destruction.

' _End me, Alyssa…'_ A broken voice whispered in her mind.

' _...Deoxys?'_ Her tears fell upon his ruin, as that terrible need of his bridged their minds.

' _...Unmake me, molecule by molecule. Strip me atom from my every atom. You're the only one who can. Undo what created me, and never… never…'_ Deoxys's voice grew faint, as the fear of her unknown fate strangled his final hope.

' _...Never let me rise again…'_

Grey arms fell around his fallen form. Grey arms lifted him from the smoldering dirt. Grey arms cradled his broken body, and drew him into a tight embrace.

' _No.'_ Said the loving child decisively, as she placed his weeping head against her shoulder.

' _...Why?'_ Sobbed the foreign analogue, as the purest innocence denied his only chance to know peace. But though the emotions fought within her as well, Alyssa shed not a tear while she rocked his shattered remains.

' _Hush, Deoxys. Hush…'_ Alyssa gently chided, as she rested a cheek against his crown.

' _...Why, Alyssa?'_ The red boy begged, his bitter tears falling anew.

' _Because I love you, Deoxys. And because I always will.'_ Alyssa whispered to the lost child that she held in her tender embrace.

' _...Love?'_ Deoxys murmured, as he struggled to move his ravaged frame.

' _Can you feel my love, Deoxys? Can you feel all of my love?'_ Alyssa drew his twitching flagella around herself, and pressed herself against his battered shape.

The flagella began to spasm, as passion drove faint life into their ends.

' _I love you, Deoxys… I love all that you are. I love all that you hold dear. Do you love me too, Deoxys?'_ Alyssa pulled herself away from him, but only to look into his eyes.

Deoxys fought to answer her, as disbelief clouded his weeping mind. But below the wonder, and beneath all the awe…

...Sparked a tiny light, both warm and weightless in its shine.

' _...Mother?'_ Deoxys murmured as he drew Alyssa near.

 _ **-.-**_

 _ **-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**_

 _ **AUTHOR'S PRAYER:**_ _Good lord, I hope you all judge me a better storyteller than a poet. Ah, well. I had to try something new._

 ** _P.S. "_** _Dearth" is another word for scarcity. Look it up i_ _f you don't believe me._


	10. Chapter X: As Prometheus Delievered Us

.

 _ **-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**_

 **The Saga of Kings:**

 **-.-.-.-**

" _ **Intersecting Parallels"**_

 **-v-**

 **.**

 _ **Written by:**_

Vile M.F. Slanders

 **.**

 _ **-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**_

 **Chapter X: As Prometheus Delivered Us**

' _Hey mom. Hey dad. Long time no see-?"_

' _...Mom, please don't cry. I'm fine. I'm okay…'_

' _...We're okay.'_

' _I know… I know that this is difficult. Believe me, I know that it's difficult… But…'_

' _...We're still a family, aren't we?'_

' _-Dad! That's not funny!'_

' _...Actually… It kinda is.'_

' _...I missed you guys… I missed both of you so much…'_

' _Yeah, Skeeter. I missed you too. You little goofball.'_

' _Listen… I can't stay for long. I have… I have to take care of something.'_

' _No, it's not like that. There's just someone…'_

' _...Someone that I need to take care of now.'_

' _You don't need to worry about me, Dad. I can take care of myself now. And anyways, I won't be alone out there… Not anymore…'_

' _Mom… I know that… I know that you wanted me to-'_

' _...I'm sorry… I can't stop crying...'_

' _But I'll be okay. I know that you both love me, and you both know that I love you…'_

' _...And even if that's all that our family can have…'_

' _...Isn't love enough?'_

' _...Stop smiling like that, dad. You're making me feel embarrassed.'_

' _...I have to go now. I'll talk to you as soon as I can. I just wanted to say that I love you…'_

' _...And thank you, for knowing who I am…'_

 _ **-.-**_

 _ **-Personal Log of Doctor Fuji, Final Entry**_

 _ **Date: December 22nd, 1523 post-Brink**_

 _ **Location: Indigo Confederacy, Kanto; Cerulean City. Gretchen's Home for the Found.**_

 _ **Subject: A New Hope**_

Two months have passed since the catastrophe that razed half of Saffron City to the the ground. Two months have passed since a pair of gods settled their differences on the fertile earth.

Two months have passed since both Venus and Mars disappeared from mankind's sphere of awareness.

I was there to witness the final battle. I was there to witness the fall of Mars. I was there to witness the triumph of Venus.

...I was there to witness Alyssa bear his ruin away in her tender arms, as she made for the distant horizon, and the hidden lands unknown to man.

Saffron City is quickly recovering. While the downtown region's infrastructure has been almost entirely obliterated, the casualties claimed by that awful battle mercifully have remained minimal.

Thanks to the coordination of the local authorities and the ACE personnel, the entirety of Saffron City was evacuated before the battle had even begun. The people of Saffron have returned to the ruin, seeking to rebuild their destroyed homes.

And alongside the rebuilding refugees toils foreign aid, as both Hoenn and Kalos have sent relief to the ravaged city.

Upon learning of the destroyed capital of his homeland, The Bastard returned to Kanto from the frontlines of the Hoenn Reclamation Campaign in order to assist with the rebuilding of Saffron City. And the Hero of All Nations brought with him powerful allies, eager to aid Kanto as we had assisted them.

Halfway through the relief effort, The Bastard was recalled to the Hoenn Reclamation Campaign. But before he left Kanto on the back of his mighty Midgar, The Bastard gave one of his typical tactless public speeches, stressing the importance of humanity's unity and glorifying the indomitable human spirit.

...And despite his usual overuse of vulgarities and his signature emotional displays, The Bastard's speech was well received. The spirit of Saffron was only bruised by the destruction of their homes. The will of Saffron's people remains strong.

The unbelievable forces behind Saffron's ruin was detected by a variety of geomagnetic institutions across the globe, and though the common populace remains oblivious to the truth…

...The various governments are aware that earth itself narrowly dodged absolute annihilation, and the culprit responsible for the potential destruction of our world still remains at large.

And despite the discrete hunt for his whereabouts turning up naught, there are countless sightings of him all across the globe, erratically occurring wherever the battles of feral mon and naked man claim human life.

The Rangers, who are most familiar with his appearances, know him as Mars, their God of War, and the Savior of Doomed Soldiers.

I can't help but detect Alyssa's involvement in this sudden transition. Though all accounts clearly indicate that Deoxys still maintains an insatiable bloodlust and an apathetic disregard for the sanctity of his enemies' remains…

...It seems that Bloody Mars has named the monsters of the Brink as his nemesis, and the warriors that fight beneath the red beret as his allies.

Which brings us now to the fate of Venus, the guiding light of all our hope.

Alyssa is very much same that she has ever been. It appears that Venus has left the field of battle to Mars, and has since devoted her gifts to the location and protection of mankind's lost children.

There are reports coming in everyday about a violet woman guiding wounded Trainers out of the deathly Frontier and back into the arms of their worried parents.

Our Loving Venus, the Goddess of Compassion, who protects the lost and defenseless, and returns them to their waiting homes.

Two celestial entities walk amongst the gardens of earth, and though their means differ, both Mars and Venus have endeavored to protect the creature known as man.

...The same selfish creature that stole so much from the gods.

As for me…

...Me, the Boogeyman, Dr. Fuji…

...I am finally set free.

The Mew-2 Project and all of its assets have been completely dissolved. It seems that even the Director of ACE can see the reason against committing to such risky investments. The Director may be both ambitious and cruel, but no man stands before the eve of obliteration without feeling some remorse for the loss of his species and all of their achievements.

All of my ACE provided amenities have been disavowed, and all of their financial resources withdrawn from my accounts. I am no longer in the employ of ACE, and yet I still live…

...Giving me reason to believe that while the Director may have learned a valuable lesson, he still intends to leave one dangerous backdoor open…

Regardless of the implications of my continued life, I have decided to commit my remaining years to the vain goal of mine absolution.

What I did cannot be forgotten, should not be forgotten, and can never be forgiven…

...But I must try to atone for my sins. I must do all that I can for Alyssa…

...Because, if not to repay what I stole from her, then to repay her for what she gave to me in her compassion…

So now I serve as a lowly physician in a orphanage, tending to both the medical and emotional needs of all my young wards.

...And despite the twist of irony… Despite my morbid past…

...I have never known such humble fulfillment in all of my ambitious life.

I now tend to the needs of our budding future. I get to see them growing everyday. And I endeavor to teach them what she taught me, in hopes that our kind never forgets…

...That it is not the wisdom or ingenuity of the old and bitter that defines our species, but rather, it is the child's love that we are born unto; the child's love that asks no questions and holds no doubts. It is the child's love that separates mankind from the monsters.

...And it is the child's love that we must remember.

 _They deserve to be remembered._

 _They deserve to be forever._

 _ **-.-**_

Alyssa returned to their home in the Frontier, far from where any eyes of man could see. Far from her family in distant Saffron. Far from the sterile graves of the twelve. Far from where the final battle had been won.

Far from where they had both begun.

He was waiting for her, beneath the shade of their white tree. He was resting beneath the green boughs, listening to the music of the wind.

' _Are you okay, Deoxys?'_ Alyssa asked as she settled in the grass beside him. The ventricles of his masque split open, and his two eyes rose to meet hers.

' _I'm quite fine, Alyssa. How do your parents fare?'_ Deoxys asked in a nervous voice, as the guilt of his prior actions came back to haunt him.

' _They're both doing well, Deoxys. Dad wouldn't stop giving me a hard time about my mysterious boyfriend.'_ Alyssa teased, shaking Deoxys out of his gloom with a warm laugh.

' _Boyfriend-?!'_ The foreign analogue was scandalized when Alyssa relayed the colloquial term's connotation to him.

' _What's wrong Deoxys? Are you afraid of cooties?'_ Alyssa giggled, as she leaned against the white tree alongside him.

' _Cooties? By your definition, I am cooties.'_ Deoxys stated in a dry tone. Alyssa burst out laughing, and threw an arm around Deoxys's shoulders.

' _You're supposed to feel flattered that my Dad thinks so highly of you.'_ Alyssa giggled as Deoxys lay his head upon her shoulder.

' _...Is that referral intended to flatter me, or you?'_ Deoxys asked in a suspicious voice.

' _Both, you goof.'_ Alyssa teased, as she squeezed his slender frame tightly.

A pair of flagella rose from the shadowed grass, yet unlike their counterparts, these flagella were not red.

This pair of flagella were blue, and it was these same blue limbs that encircled Alyssa and drew her into an embrace.

Alyssa swallowed when Deoxys held her. She knew what the blue signified, and Alyssa knew why Deoxys refused to touch her with the red.

Redemption was a long and painful road for the ancient and lonely analogue. Redemption that he still felt unjust in pursuing, but redemption he still endeavored to find.

' _...For you, Alyssa. You are worth it…'_ Deoxys murmured as his eyes sank back behind the masque.

And though he tried to hide it from her, Alyssa could still feel his grief.

' _Deoxys… Can I tell you a story?'_ Alyssa asked in a soft voice. Deoxys's wet eyes resurfaced, and the foreign analogue shuddered on a sigh.

' _A story, Alyssa? What manner of story?'_ Deoxys asked. Alyssa drew him even closer, as she cradled Deoxys in her lap.

' _...A story about a princess, her knight, a mighty dragon and an evil wizard.'_ Alyssa answered.

' _...How does this story begin?'_ Deoxys asked, and Alyssa felt a sad smile curl either corner of her mouth.

' _With travesty. Once upon a time, in a kingdom far away, there lived a beautiful princess, who was protected by a noble knight…'_

 _ **-.-**_

Hope.

It's just a distant light, really. A light that you can only see across the vastest of the blackest reaches. A light that you can reach for and never hold. A light that blinds you with your own shadow whenever you grasp for its distant glow. The distant light that lies to you. The distant light that betrays every one of your fading hopes.

Hope is just an epitaph to those who have forgotten how to dream.

I once hoped. I once looked to the stars for answers. I once begged for a solution, a world of my own, a home, a family…

...And all I ever did in my pursuit of hope was beg.

I never understood that the ability to realize every one of those impossible hopes resided within me all along.

To dream.

To dream is to hope further than mere hope. To dream is to live your hope. To dream is to aspire beyond hope. To dream is to hope, and to endeavor to make all your hopes a reality.

Now I dream of a solution. And every passing day brings me closer to it. Now I dream of a world that I can call home. And with every passing day, I will seek to promote and defend that home. Now I dream of a family…

...And after great misfortune and terrible hardship, my family has finally been delivered unto me.

My family has given me all the love that I will ever need, and I in turn, will give my family all the love that I possess…

...Because my family has taught me how to dream…

I have no further use for those distant and dying lights. I have no more need of deceitful epitaphs.

I am my own shining light.

I will become the answer to all of my questions.

And I will share my light and my answers with all those who still hope…

...I did it, mother.

I did it.

...I've learned how to create.

 _ **-.-**_

 _ **(-)**_

 _ **-.-**_

' _...And even though the knight and the princess faced great trials in the years to come…'_ Alyssa pulled Deoxys closer to herself, and giggled as his blue flagella tightened gently around her.

' _...The two still lived happily ever after…'_ Alyssa kissed his sleeping brow, and turned her eyes towards the setting sun with a soft smile playing upon her lips.

' _...The End.'_

 **...**

 _ **-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**_

 _This concludes "Intersecting Parallels." I hope that you enjoyed reading the story as much as I did writing it. While I'm sure that many of you are hoping for a sequel, I'm rather content with how this story ended, and I see very little reason to carry on past the appropriate conclusion._

 _For those of you who still lament the end of this story, do be aware that my most ambitious of Fan Fiction projects remains actively underway. My progression in "The Saga of Kings, Book I: Hero" shows no sign of slowing down, and there is still another two books to be penned for the Trilogy._

 _Enough of my obvious and shameless plugging, it's time for me to plunge back into the grey yonder._

 _Farewell Alyssa. Farewell Deoxys. It was a pleasure to have met you both._


End file.
